

* & ^ 



*oV* 





?j,° ^$v» <£■ * ?S»af» ^ 










OJ 



• * 6, 














,V tf o M *tt 




<» *o . » * 






* A^ 



BY THE SAME AUTHORS. 



OUTLINE HISTORY OF GREECE. T 6mo $o 50 

OUTLINE HISTORY OF ROME. i6mo 70 

By JOHN H. VINCENT, D.D. 

CHAUTAUQUA TEXT-BOOKS: 

No. 1. Bible Exploration. i8mo. Paper 10 

No. 4. English History. " " 10 

No. 5. Greek History. " " 10 

No. 16. Roman History. m " 10 

No. 35. Outlines of General History. i8mo. Paper 10 

No. 39. Sunday-School Normal Class. li " 10 

No. 48. Our Superintendent. i8mo. Paper 10 

CHAUTAUQUA MOVEMENT. i 2 mo 100 

MODERN SUNDAY-SCHOOL. i 2 mo 100 

REVIVAL AND AFTER THE REVIVAL. Square i8mo 40 

SUNDAY-SCHOOL INSTITUTES AND NORMAL CLASSES. 

i2mo 65 



The Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle. 

STUDIES FOR 1889-90. 

An Introduction to Political Economy. Ely $1 00 

Bible in the Nineteenth Century. Townsend 40 

How to Judge of a Picture. Van Dyke 60 

Outline History of Rome. Vincent and Joy 70 

Physics. Steele 1 00 

Preparatory and College Latin Course in English, i vol. 

Wilkinson 1 30 



AN OUTLINE 



HISTORY OF ROME 



BY 



JOHN HrVINCENT 



AND 



! 



JAMES R: JOY 



,rA^. 







'/RIGHT *<$ 



II' £71889 „ 

" SHiNGTO'W' 



n\ 



NEW YORK 

Chautauqua Press 

1889 



The required books of the C. L. S. C. are recommended by a 
Council of Six. It must, however, be understood that recommen- 
dation does not involve an approval by the Council, or by any 
member of it, of every principle or doctrine contained in the book 
recommended. 



vjK 






Copyright 1889, by Hunt 6i Eaton, 805 Broadway, New York. 



PREFACE 



The Hellenes, who settled the Grecian peninsula, 
and the Latins, who peopled Italy, were from the same 
old Indo-European stock. The former represented the 
literary and artistic power of the race, the latter its 
ruling energy. The one sounded the depth of philos- 
ophy, delighted in discussion, found inexhaustible 
sources of pleasure in public games and in the drama, 
transported the marble from Pentelicus to Athens, and 
transformed it into forms of grace and beauty; the 
other loved physical strength, the march and struggle 
and triumph of great armies, the building up of em- 
pire, the subjection of foreign powers, and the enact- 
ment and execution of laws for its own and for other 
people. The rulers proved more than a match for their 
elegant and cultured cousins. The sword was mightier 
than pen or chisel, and the Acropolis bowed to the 
Capitolinus. " First with the sword, and afterward 
with the more powerful arms of religious faith, Eome 
ruled a large portion of the European w T orld for 
centuries." 

The history of this great empire is especially inter- 
esting to the Christian student. While Ahaz ruled in 



4 Preface. 

Judah the foundations of Rome were laid by Romulus, 
the legends say ; about the time that Cyrus proclaimed 
liberty to the Jews by the Euphrates the last of the 
" seven kings" — Tarquinius Superbus — began to reign 
by the Tiber; and when Ezra was sent to govern Judea 
Coriolanus was banished from Rome. 

The stream of Roman history began to glow with 
new light when, in the days of the first Emperor 
Augustus, a greater than Augustus appeared as the 
" Babe of Bethlehem," before whom the race is yet to 
bow and "crown him Lord of all." Little did the men 
who made Rome the power and the terror it was dream 
that its aggressions and control were but preparations 
for the coming of One mightier than any or all of the 
rulers over the vast empire. Forerunners of the King 
of kings were all these crowned and sceptered chief- 
tains. They built their ships that Paul and his associ- 
ates might sail the Eastern seas. They stretched out 
broad and smooth and well-defended highways that 
God's word of gospel grace might the more swiftly run. 
Thus man's work furthers God's plan. They unify 
government and spread abroad a common speech, that 
Hebrew truth, informed by a new and living Spirit, 
may sweep from east to west, from north to south, and 
give news of one salvation to all men every-where. 

Thereafter Rome occupies an important place in eccle- 
siastical history, from the days of Paul, the "Roman 
citizen," to these times, when Pope Leo XIII. sits in the 
Vatican as head of the Romish Church, while Protestant 



Preface. 5 

Churches — European and American — proclaim a free 
gospel under the shadow of St. Peter's. 

It would seem as if all manner of experiments were 
to be made in Rome. The saint in the Catacombs was 
to try the effect of persecution and affliction on Chris- 
tian faith. Worldly prosperity, with king on the 
throne and the disciples of the lowly One in palaces, 
was to show the Church through succeeding ages how 
bad a thing for the followers of the Cross-bearer are 
wealth and honor, ease and luxury. Supreme ecclesi- 
astical control for centuries, with pope in power and 
the crowns of kingdoms at his feet, were to demon- 
strate the peril of temporal power in hands that should 
be empty and outstretched in persuading the race to 
forsake all and to follow Christ. 

Rome has her lessons for the true Church of Jesus 
Christ, lessons of warning, emphatic and earnest, 
against worldly ambition, greed of gold, and earthly 
influence. 

A brighter day dawns for Rome and for the race. 
For a time indeed — since the end is not yet — might shall 
conquer right, the Pharisee scorn the penitent publican, 
and the chains bind bodies of those whom Christ has 
made free; but, lo ! the triumph cometh. An open 
Bible, a free people, just laws, human pity and help, 
a full salvation, shall yet be found in Rome; the Rome 
of ancient and of modern oppressions, the Rome of the 
heroic Paul, the Rome of the faithful few to whom, in 
the early clays of our faith, Paul wrote his words of 



ti Preface. 

greeting, of doctrine, of exhortation, and of consolation. 
And it is an interesting fact that while memories of 
ancient prowess and of ancient culture, of mediaeval 
splendor, and of later heroism, give fascination to the 
pages of Eoman history, the name that is to-day most 
alive, most suggestive and inspiring, is that of the 
great apostle to the Gentiles, whose labors and writ- 
ings are so intimately associated with the great city on 
the Tiber. 

JOHN H. VINCENT. 

Buffalo, N. Y., April, 1889. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE. 

Preliminary. — Italy and the Italians. — Rome and 
the Romans II 

CHAPTER II. 
Rome under the Kings 35 



CHAPTER III. 

Rise of the Plebeians in the City, and Rise of Rome 
in Italy . . 60 



CHAPTER IY. 
Punic Wars and Foreign Conquests 83 

CHAPTER V. 
Civil Wars and Decline op the Republic 113 

CHAPTER VI. 

From the Conspiracy of Catiline to the Fall op the 
Republic 1 4 3 

CHAPTER VII. 
The Empire from Augustus to Commodus r.9 



8 Contents. 

CHAPTER Till. 

PAGE. 

From the Death of Commodus to the Fall of the 
Western Empire 216 

CHAPTER IX. 

The Eastern Empire to its Fall. The Holy Roman 
Empire 233 



Pronunciation of Names and Foreign Words 241 

Index 245 



> » >» « 

MAPS. 

Italy, showing Districts 10 

Site of Ancient Rome 25 

Plan of Ancient Rome 28 

Illustrating Punic Wars 85 

The Roman Empire 178 



ANALYSIS 



First Period. 
Rome Under the Kings. 753-509 B. C— 244 years. 

Second Period. 
The Roman Republic. 509-31 B. C. — 478 years. 

I. Rise of Plebs, and Rise of Rome. 509-264 B. C. 
II. Punic Wars and Foreign Conquests. 264-133 B. C. 
III. Civil Wars and Fall of Republic. 133-31 B. C. 

Third Period. 

The Roman Empire. 31 B. C.-476 A. D.— 507 years. 

I. From Augustus to Commodus. 31 B. C.-192 A. D. 
II. The Decline and Fall. 192-476 A. D. 

Conclusion. 

To the Fall of the Eastern Empire. 1453 A. D. 




Tacitus. 



OUTLINE HISTORY OF ROME. 



CHAPTER 



Preliminary — Italy and the Italians — Rome 
and the Romans. 

A long, narrow peninsula swings out from the 
body of Europe into the Mediterranean Sea, tend- 
ing to the eastward as it falls. Its contour on the 
map bears a singular and lively resemblance to a 
human leg and foot. The central mountain range 
suggests strength, and the tip of the toe poised 
above the triangular island of Sicily suggests 
vigorous action. That strong peninsular limb, 
drawn back toward the east and ready to sweep 
forward toward the west, may fitly represent the 
Rome of history; restless, aggressive, mighty, 
disturbing the waters of the Mediterranean and 
sending heavy swells of war and conquest to 
every shore that guards the sea, and many a 
league beyond — to Parthia on the Caspian and to 
Britain in the Atlantic. 

The history which lies before us is not the 
history of this boot-shaped Italian peninsula ; it is 
the remarkable record of the rise and develop- 
ment of a single Italian city from a position of 



12 Outline History of Home. 

insignificant weakness to the sovereignty, not 
only of Italy, but of the world. Grecian history 
centers now in Sparta, now in Thebes, now in 
Athens, now in Macedon ; but Roman history is 
the story of the acts and achievements of one city 
through twelve centuries of its growth, eminence, 
and decline. This single sovereign city was 
Rome. 

The way to the study of Roman history lies 
through a knowledge of the geography of Italy; 
for it is to this peninsula that Roman influence 
and authority were confined during the first five 
centuries of the city's existence. 

Italy is the central' of the three peninsulas of 
southern Europe, Spain lying to the west, and the 
Balkan peninsula, with Greece at its extremity, on 
the east. The Alps mountains, massive and lofty, 
cut it off from the continent, the two piers of 
their arch resting on the gulfs of Genoa and 
Venice. On the east is the Adriatic, which the 
Romans called the Upper Sea, in distinction from 
the Lower, or Tuscan Sea, which washed their 
western shores. The Ionian Sea, on the south, 
rolls between " the sole of the boot " and Greece, 
completing the natural boundaries. The extreme 
length of Italy from Mount Blanc, in the northern 
highlands, to the southernmost point of Calabria, 
measures about seven hundred miles. From the 
tip of the heel in Calabria to the tip of the toe at 
Rhegium it is two hundred miles as the crow flies. 
The breadth of the northern expansion is a little 



Preliminary — Italy and Rome. 13 

over three hundred miles. The ordinary width of 
the peninsula is about one hundred miles. The 
area of the country is somewhat less than one 
hundred thousand square miles, and is about twice 
that of the State of New York. 

The Alps and the Apennines are the only con- 
siderable mountain ranges. The former reach the 
height of fifteen thousand feet and present a diffi- 
cult but not impassable barrier to foreign invasion. 
Where the Alps descend toward the sea at their 
south-western end the Apennines have their be- 
ginning. This long and somewhat open chain at 
first trails eastward to the Adriatic and then 
turns sharply to the south, keeping the middle of 
the peninsula for a few hundred miles as a rocky 
midrib, and in the far south breaking up into a 
net-work of hills with intervening valleys. Besides 
these two main ranges there are a few famous 
volcanic summits, some wildly active, others long 
at rest. These are iEtna, in Sicily, and Mount 
Vultur, the Alban Hills, and Vesuvius, on the 
mainland. 

The Padus, or Po — Virgil's " King of Rivers " 
— is the one large river of Italy. With its tribu- 
taries — the Trebia, Ticinus, Addua, and Mincius — 
and the Athesis or Adige, it waters the great plain 
of Lombardy, as we call the flat district which lies 
between the Alps and the Apennines. The other 
streams are small, and flow from the central water- 
shed, eastward or westward, to the sea. The 
Adriatic receives the Rubicon, Metaurus, Frento, 



14 Outline History of Rome. 

and Aufidus ; the Macra, Arnus, Tiber, Liris, Vul- 
turnus and Silarus flow into the Tuscan Sea. 

Until late in the history of Rome the valley of 
the Po was not considered politically a part of 
Italy, the northern boundary of which was not 
the Alps, but the Apennine mountains and the 
water-courses Macra and Rubicon. This section, 
Northern, or Continental Italy, as it is variously 
called, differed widely from the southern portion, 
or Italy Proper, in physical features, population, 
and history. N orthern Italy included three distinct 
regions : Liguria, on the west, skirting the Gulf of 
Genoa, Venetia, eastward, on the Gulf of Venice, 
and between them Gallia Cisalpina,* or Hither 
Gaul, abounding in fertile fields, populous cities, 
and brave men. 

Among the towns of Northern Italy were Ver- 
cellae, Augusta Taurinorum and Genoa, in Liguria; 
Patavium and Aquileja, in Venetia; and in Cis- 
alpine Gaul, Mediolanum, Ticinum, Cremona, 
Mantua, Bononia, Placentia, Lucca, and Ravenna. 

The country south of ' the Rubicon was Italy 
Proper of the Romans. It was made up of two 
general divisions, Central and Lower Italy. 

Central Italy extended from the little rivers 

* Gallia Cisalpina means Gaul this side the Alps, or Hither 
Gaul, as distinguished from Gallia Transalpina, or Farther 
Gaul, the modern France. Cisalpine Gaul, was likewise 
called Gallia Togata, because its people might wear the 
Roman robe or toga. The Transalpine Gauls were braccati — 
that is, u clad in breeches." 



Preliminary —Italy and Rome. 15 

Macra and Rubicon, on the north, to the Silarus 
and Frento, on the south, and from sea to sea. 
The central mountain range and tribal differences 
subdivided its territory into six districts. On the 
Tuscan sea-coast were Etruria, Latium and Cam- 
pania, and beyond the highlands were Umbria, 
Picenum, and Samnium. 

Etruria lay in the well-watered plain which 
was left by the Apennines as they bowed toward 
the east. Its inhabitants, the Etruscans, were 
already an ancient race when Rome was founded. 
They had made progress in civilization and the 
arts, and their fleets were strong in the seas of the 
west. Lake Trasimenus was in their territory, as 
were the towns Volaterrse, Arretium, Clusium, 
Caere, and Veii, long a rival of Rome. Just south 
of Etruria, and almost midway of the peninsula, 
lay Latium, a narrow strip of hill and plain be- 
tween the Tiber and the Liris. Here, in a league 
of thirty communities, dwelt in very early times 
the Latins. Here, also, were the iEqui, Hernici, 
and Yolsci, of slightly different blood and language. 
Prominent among the Latin towns were Alba 
Longa, Tibur, Praaneste, Minturnse, Antium, Ar- 
pinum, Fregellse, and pre-eminent among all the 
towns of Latium, indeed, of all the world, Rome. 

Still farther south was Campania, whose sunny 
skies and fertile hill-sides early attracted the Gre- 
cian colonists, and in the later days of Roman 
luxury filled it with the costly villas of senators 
and knights. Here was Cumae, where the Sibyl 



16 Outline History of Rome. 

had guarded her magic books ; Baiae, in whose 
waters emperors delighted to bathe ; Capua, whose 
pleasures made Hannibal forget his oath ; Mi* 
senum, the head-quarters of the imperial fleet; 
Neapolis, on its famous bay ; and near at hand 
Herculaneum and Pompeii, under the threatening 
brow of Vesuvius. 

The district known as Umbria extended from the 
Adriatic over the crown of the Apennines to the 
borders of Etruria and Latium. The Tiber had 
its sources among these Umbrian hills, and within 
these borders were the towns of Ariminum, Spo- 
letium, Narnia, and Sentinum. Picenum was a 
land of peace and plenty lying along the adjacent 
coast. Its people were of the Samnite stock, and 
near them lived the related Marsi, Pseligni, and 
Frentani. In the Picene territory were Ancona, 
a Roman naval station, and Asculum, a fortress 
whose reduction long taxed the strength of Rome. 

The Samnites occupied a range of the interior 
highlands and a seaboard strip on the Adriatic. 
They were hardy and frugal, like the early Romans, 
and retained these simple virtues and the military 
spirit which sprang from them long after the 
Roman type had lost its best characteristics. The 
neighboring and kindred tribe of Sabines was one 
of the first to come in contact with the rising city, 
and the Samnites themselves were the most per- 
sistent enemies of Roman dominion in Italy. 
Reate, Amiternum, and Cures were the best-known 
towns of the Sabine land. And Rome had reason 



Preliminary — Italy and Rome. 17 

to remember the names of the Samnite fortresses, 
Corfinium, Sulmo, Bovianum, Beneventum, and 
especially Caudium, the scene of a notable dis- 
aster. 

Lower Italy embraced all the peninsula south of 
the Silarus and Frento rivers. Its districts were 
four: Apulia, Calabria, Lucania, and Bruttium. So 
many colonies from Greece had settled in the warm 
nooks of this lovely coast that the whole region 
received the name of Magna Grecia, or Great 
Greece. Apulia was a land of shepherds and 
herdsmen. Cannae, on the Aufidus, was the most 
famous of its plains. Here, too, near the same 
river and below the silent crater of Mount Vultur, 
was Venusia, the birth-place of the poet Horace. 

Calabria, the heel of Italy, had both grazing 
lands and farmsteads. Two of its towns are 
prominent in history : Tarentum, the Greek colony 
which vainly withstood the power of Rome, and 
Brundisium, the port of embarkation for travelers 
bound from Italy to the Orient. 

The broad Tarentine Gulf rolled between Cal- 
abria and Bruttium, " the toe," and Lucania, "the 
instep" of Italy. In Lucania were numerous Greek 
towns — Psestum, Metapontum, and Heraclea. , 
Sybarig, whose luxury contributed the word 
" sybarite " to our vocabulary, was in Bruttium, 
as were Croton, Locri, and, at the very tip-toe, 
commanding the Sicilian straits, Rhegium. 

At an early date there were no Italian islands, 
but the authority of Rome at length brought the 
2 



18 Outline History of Rome. 

neighboring Sicily (Trinacria), Sardinia, and Cor- 
sica within the Italian domain, together with the 
islets and groups Elba, Malta, Capri, Liparse, and 
iEgusse. The three larger islands furnished a 
share of the Roman breadstuffs, and Sicily, which 
had been settled by both Greeks and Carthaginians 
before the rise of Rome, had many thriving towns 
— Messana on the straits, Catana at the foot of 
^Etna, Agrigentum, Lilybaeum, Drepanum, Panor- 
mus — names which will occur again in the narra- 
tive, and Syracuse, a royal capital for whose posses- 
sion three empires made Sicily their battle-ground. 
The extent of the peninsula from north to south, 
and the large amount of high land included within 
its boundaries, give to Italy a great diversity of 
climate. Its northern boundaiy is on the parallel 
of Quebec, in Canada, and the city of Richmond, 
in Virginia, has the same latitude as its southern 
extremity ; yet from several causes the differences 
of heat and cold are less than this comparison 
would suggest. For the mountains modify the 
climate, and the surrounding seas temper and 
moisten the winds which blow to Italy across 
their surface. In consequence the plains of upper 
Italy enjoy a temperate and generally healthful 
climate. The Alps shut in the Po valley from the 
hard winters of Central Europe ; but chilling blasts 
sometimes swoop down from their icy summits to 
render summer days comfortless. The strip of 
sea-coast between the Apennines and the Gulf of 
Genoa — the modern Riviera — is a winter paradise. 



Preliminary — Italy and Rome. 19 

Central Italy — the Italy of Rome and Latium 
— is in the latitude of Boston, but its winters are 
mild and the hot season is not intolerable. Little 
snow falls except in the highlands, and the rivers 
seldom freeze. From Campania southward the 
land enjoys almost perpetual summer. Magna 
Grecia is semi-tropical in its warmth and moisture, 
and Sicily has a well-earned reputation for un- 
clouded skies. The frequent references of the 
Latin poets to nipping frosts, snow-capped hills, 
and ice-bound rivers have prompted the question 
whether the climate of ancient Italy was no more 
severe than that of the same districts in modern 
times; and it is now believed that the disappear- 
ance of the forests, which in the old times covered 
a large part of the peninsula, has affected both the 
temperature and the amount of rainfall. There 
have always been drawbacks from the pleasures 
of life in Italy. From the days of the foundation 
of Rome the lowlands of Latium and other regions 
have been haunted by malarial germs. The 
Roman Campagna was, and is, a plague-spot ; the 
marsh lands of Etruria and the stagnant lagoons of 
Venetia poison the air at certain seasons of the 
year, and at times the Sirocco, a burning wind from 
the African deserts, sweeps across the sea bringing 
fever and blight. But these were the only ex- 
ceptions to the general beauty and comfort of the 
land. Italy was " sunny " then as now. The vine 
and olive have flourished and come to perfection 
on its hill-sides since the early days when the 



20 Outline History of Rome, 

Romans thought Saturn, the father of the gods, 
set them there. Besides the rich olive-oil and del- 
icate wine the land yielded the ruder staples — 
wheat, flax, and hemp. Orchard and forest fruits 
were abundant and various. The large fruit of 
the chestnut-tree was an important feature of the 
yearly harvest, and lemons, oranges, figs, almonds, 
and dates were plentiful and cheap. Sections of 
the country were peculiarly adapted to the profit- 
able raising of sheep and oxen, and agriculture or 
grazing was the natural industry of the Italian. 

The clear and brilliant atmosphere gave to the 
Italian skies a richness of color which has always 
been the admiration of poets and the despair of 
painters. The omnipresent mountains and the 
never distant sea lend to the landscape a living and 
ever changing charm. The bays and inlets of the 
south, together with the tangle of the adjacent 
mountains, present a resemblance to the Grecian 
landscape which could not have been lost upon 
the impressionable colonists from Attica and the 
Peloponnesus who settled here. Elsewhere the 
resemblance to Greece is noticeably wanting. The 
shores are low and regular. The mountains seldom 
approach the coast, and their general form is such 
that they do not form partition walls to shut up 
cities to themselves, like the Greek cantons, where 
every rock-walled valley was a State. It has been 
often and truthfully said that Greece and Italy, 
though side by side, lie back to back ; for the 
life and movement of the former were directed east- 



Preliminary — Italy and Rome. 21 

ward from Athens, Thebes, and Sparta by means 
of the JEgean Islands — stepping-stones to the 
hospitable shores of Asia. But on the side toward 
Greece Italy had but two harbors, Ancona and 
Brundisium. Rome, Genoa, and Naples faced the 
setting sun, and the Roman armies had proved 
their prowess against Sicily, Sardinia, and Car- 
thage before the first Roman trireme crossed the 
Ionian Sea to plant the Roman standard on Hel- 
lenic soil. 

The first inhabitants of Italy of whom any thing 
is known w^ere the Iapygians, who entered the 
peninsula from the north and retreated southward 
before successive waves of immigration. A few in- 
decipherable inscriptions in their language remain ; 
but in the Roman times they had ceased to be a 
nation of any strength or influence, having lost 
their individuality by blending it with the stronger 
Greek race which colonized their territory and re- 
duced them to subjection. The Italians who fol- 
lowed w r ere of the same Aryan or Indo-Euro- 
pean family as the Iapygians. The Aryans are 
supposed to have lived before the dawn of history, 
on one of the great table-lands of Central Asia. 
Thence from time to time, as their limits became 
too narrow for their necessities, colonies set out ; 
not a few persons to found a town, but men, 
women, and children by the million to find homes 
and plant nations. These successive throbs of im- 
migration were doubtless centuries apart, and 
these floods of people deluged both India and 



22 Outline History of Rome. 

Europe. There is no record of these migrations. 
They took place before the days of writing, and 
no intelligible tradition has come down from those 
misty days. But the scientific comparison of the 
ancient languages has enabled scholars to group 
these nations in families and to calculate the bond 
of relationship between them. Thus it has been 
proved that the. Italians were closely related to the 
Hellenes or Greeks ; that in their westward jour- 
ney ings from the first home in Asia the two na- 
tions were in company long enough to acquire 
many common traits of character, to practice sim- 
ilar customs, and in some cases to employ the same 
words to express their thoughts. The probable 
route of this hypothetical migration lay through 
Asia Minor, across the Bosphorus, and through 
Thrace. Here the Hellenes turned southward to 
occupy their peninsula and to give it renown, while 
their former fellow-travelers moved on slowly 
toward the north-west, doubling the head of the 
Adriatic in the lapse of centuries and pouring 
down into the fertile prairie-lands of the Po. The 
ages which had intervened since their separation 
from the Greeks had wrought changes in the Ital- 
ian character and language, and it was a stern, 
hardy, and unimaginative race that peopled Italy, 
pushing the gentle lapygians before them. 

There were marked differences among the Ital- 
ians themselves. Slight but essential variations 
in their use of the common language show plainly 
that the stock was divided. * One part, composed 



Preliminary— Italy and. Rome. 23 

of the Umbrians and Samnites, and hence called 
the TJmbro-Sabellian branch (including also Sa- 
bines and Oscans), found its home among the 
mountains of Central and Southern Italy, and 
spread thence to the Adriatic coast. The other 
branch, the Latins, dwelt in the hill-encircled plain 
on the east side of the peninsula south of the 
Tiber. It was, perhaps, less numerous than its 
congener of the adjacent highlands, but it was 
more fortunate in its location. For within its ter- 
ritory and of its people were the Romans, who 
raised the Latin name and tongue to the first rank 
in Italy. 

Besides the retiring Iapygians and the conquer- 
ing Italians, a third important race, the Etruscan, 
had its home in Italy, coming whence and when 
is scarcely known. These people were probably 
Aryans, like their neighbors, but differently de- 
veloped and leaving Asia at another era. Their 
resemblance to the Greeks and Italians was remote 
and indistinct. The accepted theory is that they 
came into the peninsula by the land route and 
settled in the Po valley until expelled by stronger 
invaders. They then crossed the Apennines and 
made their home in the district north of Latium, 
between the Tiber and Arnus, which is still called 
Tuscany in honor of their name. Here in early 
times they had a league of twelve strong communi- 
ties, and it was their strength and superior civili- 
zation which placed the first serious check upon 
the power of Rome. Etruria attained its prime 



24 Outline History of Rome. 

about five centuries before Christ. It was then a 
naval power, and its fleets met those of Greece 
and Carthage in equal combat, But the following 
century saw its decline, and by rapid degrees its 
territory and authority were acquired by Rome. 

In the earliest historic times two other nations 
appeared in Italy — the Gauls or Celts in the north, 
and the Greeks in the south. These Celts were 
an off-shoot of the Germanic stock, which spread 
over western Europe and founded Germany, 
France, Spain, and Britain. The Gauls took full 
possession of the Po valley and gained for it the 
name of Cisalpine Gaul. Though barbarians by 
race they early adopted civilization, and in the 
time of Caesar they were admitted to the full dig- 
nities of Roman citizenship. 

Unlike the four first-named peoples, Iapygians, 
Italians, Etruscans and Celts, who entered Italy 
through the Alpine passes on the north, the Greeks 
came in at the south and by sea. Again unlike 
the others, they were not a migrating nation, but 
a succession of colonies sent out to relieve the 
overflowing cities of Greece. The time of their 
earliest settlements is in the vicinity of 1000 B. C, 
when the close of the Trojan War sent many a 
crew of mariners in quest of new adventures. 
The process of colonization extended through 
four centuries, and Greek cities sprang up thickly 
along the southern and western coasts as far north 
as Cumse and the Bay of Naples. Temples, thea- 
ters, and schools arose wherever the Greeks found 



Preliminary — Italy and Rome. 



25 



an abiding-place, and the wealth and extravagant 
luxury of Magna Grecia were proverbial before the 
name of Rome was known beyond its narrow circle 
of Latin towns. But the Greek cities, with the 
fatal political weakness of their race, preferred in- 
dividual independence to union against a common 
enemy; and so it happened that, when the strug- 




THE SITE OF ROME. 



gle for supremacy came, the baths and theaters of 
these elegant towns availed them nothing against 
the rude strength of the Roman commonwealth. 

What, then, was Rome, and what manner of men 
were the Romans that, one after the other, the sev- 
eral races of the peninsula bowed at her bidding ? 
The remainder of this volume will be an answer to 
this inquiry. But the answer will be clearer if the 



26 Outline History of Rome. 

student will bear in mind the physical features of 
" the Eternal City " and the characteristics of the 
Romans themselves. 

The city was built on a cluster of low hills 
in Latium, on the left bank of the river Tiber, 
a few miles below its junction with the Anio, 
and twenty-two miles from its mouth at Ostia, 
on the Tuscan Sea. As it approaches the site of 
Rome the Tiber turns sharply toward the east, and 
then as sharply doubles back toward the west, thus 
forming a rude S. In the upper loop of the S is a 
broad plain on which the modern city, the capital 
of Italy, is mainly built; but in the early times this 
was the parade-ground of the army, the muster- 
field of the populace, and was called the Campus 
Martius (Field of Mars), from the Roman god 
of war. Opposite the lower bend of the river are 
the hills of the ancient city. Almost on the bank 
are the Capitoline, Palatine, and Aventine, and 
farther away, separated from these as by the hollow 
or palm of a mighty hand, rise four finger-like em- 
inences, the Cselian, Esquline,Viminal and Quirinal. 
The sacred Capitoline bore the Arx, or citadel, and 
the splendid temple of Jupiter. Up the slope of 
this hill moved the famous processions of victorious 
generals, and from the precipitous Tarpeian Rock 
on its water-side criminals were hurled to destruc- 
tion. At the base of the hill was the Tullianum, 
a dungeon in which, among other noted prisoners, 
St. Peter is said to have been confined. On the 
adjoining Palatine Hill were the colossal buildings 



Preliminary — Italy and Rome. 27 

which served the Emperors Augustus and Nero 
for a residence, and which have given the name 
palace (palatiwn) to any house fit for a king. Be- 
tween this pile of palaces and the Aventine — the 
people's hill — was the Circus Maximus, where 
200,000 persons might witness the sword-fights, 
races, and rough sports which constituted the 
Roman games. The low ground between these 
three hills and the river-bank was drained by an 
ancient sewer, the Cloaca Maxima, and was as- 
signed to the produce and cattle markets. The 
principal market and meeting-place of the city, 
however, was the Roman Forum, which was situ- 
ated at the base of the Capitoline Hill, in the hollow 
of the great Roman hand. The Forum was, in fact, 
an open public square about 750 feet long by 250 
broad. As a market-place of the little city it 
naturally became the scene of public assembly for 
many important purposes. A space near one end, 
raised and cut off from the rest, was the Comitium or 
official assembly-room of the citizens, and between 
this and the Forum proper was the rostrum, or 
speaker's stand, from which the magistrates ad- 
dressed the citizens or the populace. On one or 
two sides the Forum was lined with shops, but on 
the south was a row of law-courts and temples, 
among which the shrine of the goddess Vesta was 
the most notable. Past these temples ran the Via 
Sacra (Sacred Street), by which the triumphal 
processions approached the Capitol. On the op- 
posite of the square was the Curia, or Senate 



28 



Outline History of Rome. 



Chamber. The world centered in Rome, and Rome 
centered in the Forum, where, in the time of the 
empire, stood a golden milestone, toward which 
all roads led and from w^hich all distances in the 
realm were measured. 




In this same hollow of the hills was the Suburra, 
the meanest and most crowded quarter of the city, 
and on its border, in bitter proximity, was the Car- 
inae, the dwelling-place of the richest and proudest 



Preliminary — Italy and Rome. 29 

of the citizens. In the adjacent lowlands, but nearer 
the slope of the Esquiline, still stands the ruined 
Colosseum, the remains of the Flavian Amphithe- 
ater, within whose arches 80,000 cruel Romans 
have looked on while Christian women were 
" butchered to make a Roman holiday." The four 
outer hills seem to have been less thickly settled 
than the others ; but in the period of the city's 
splendor they, too, were covered w T ith magnificent 
baths and public parks and gardens. Two hills, 
not to be included in the famous seven, w r ere situ- 
ated on the right bank of the Tiber. These are the 
Vatican, now occupied as the papal residence, and 
the Janiculus, a Roman fortress. Modern Rome 
has a population of 300,000. In the reign of the 
Emperor Augustus it had 2,000,000 inhabitants. 

How did Rome become so populous and power- 
ful ? The answer to this question does not appear 
at first sight. The geographical situation possessed 
no pre-eminent advantages, such as set apart Con- 
stantinople, Alexandria, London, and New York 
for centers of trade and population. The harbors 
of Italy are at Venice, Naples, Leghorn, Genoa, 
not on the bank of the Tiber; and Rome was the 
natural market-place of Latium only, by no means 
the largest or most fertile division of the peninsula. 
It cannot be doubted, therefore, that the wealth and 
commercial rank of Rome were the consequences, 
and not the causes, of the city's political supremacy. 
The elements of Rome's political strength are to 
be sought in the character of her people. 



30 Outline History of Rome. 

During the long period covered by " the making 
of Rome " the Romans had six distinguishing na- 
tional traits: they were unpolished, superstitious, 
proud, stern, and steadfast, and possessed a real 
genius for law and government. 

Rudeness and simplicity marked their manners 
and customs. Agriculture, war, politics, and but 
little else, concerned the citizens. In refinement 
of thought and action, in art and literature, they 
were the imitators of the Greeks, w r hose effeminacy 
they affected to despise, but whose graces they 
assiduously copied. Their national games were 
coarse and brutal. Chariot races, combats of men 
with wild beasts and with each other, were to the 
Roman what the competitions in athletics and 
in poetry and rhetoric were to the Greek. The 
foreign conquests, w r hich at length filled the city 
with public and private plunder, put an end to this 
age of simplicity. The frugality and the steady 
habits of the early Roman gave place to lav- 
ish extravagance and gross dissipation, which 
had a potent influence in the city's ultimate ruin. 

Roman superstition is shown in the religion of 
the State. Not until they had dipped into the 
fanciful mythology of the Greeks did the Romans 
think of their gods as possessing human form and 
being subject to human passions. The divinities 
were many, and represented phases of nature as 
well as the interests of the household and the na- 
tion. Jupiter was the sky, and ruled over all gods 
and men. Juno was the guardian of motherhood. 



Preliminary — Italy and Rome. 31 

Minerva was wise, Mars warlike, and Vesta the 
patron of the State. Besides Ceres, Saturn, Mer- 
cury, Neptune, and others of almost equal rank, 
there were lesser divinities to attend to the varied 
activities of business and domestic life, and in 
every Roman household the lares and penates were 
the objects of daily supplication. In the Roman 
mind religion was a contract, and worship was 
the human share in the bargain. The worshiper 
gave vows, prayers, festivals, and fasts, and in re- 
turn demanded as his right the favor of the gods. 
The State took charge of the religion, and supported 
a complex system of priests and wise men to su- 
perintend the religious observances. Of the former 
class were the Flamens, who officiated in the tem- 
ples, and the Vestal Virgins, who kept the eternal 
fire on the altar of the State in the shrine of Vesta. 
Of the wase men were the Augurs, the Pontifices, 
Fetiales, etc. The Augurs consulted the will of 
the gods by observing the actions of certain sacred 
birds, the Pontifices interpreted the omens which 
the Augurs observed, and thus had great political 
power, since, by declaring the gods unpropitious, 
a public assembly might be dissolved, an election 
postponed, or the passage of an obnoxious law 
prevented. The Pontifex Maximus, or "pope," 
was the head of the State religion. The Fetiales 
were the envoys or heralds of the State ; they pro- 
tected the sanctity of treaties and were the agents 
of the Senate in fixing boundaries and in declaring 
war. The Haruspices, like the Augurs, consulted 



32 Outline History of Rome. 

the gods, but in a stranger fashion. It was their 
duty to seek for omens in the entrails of the sheep 
and oxen slaughtered for the sacrifices. This re- 
ligion, with its gloomy rites and with its supersti- 
tious faith in omens, sufficed for the days of un- 
reasoning faith, but it had completely lost its hold 
upon the thinking classes before the advent of 
Christianity. 

The pride of a Roman noble or patrician was 
colossal. The internal history of the State through 
the first four centuries revolves about the resist- 
ance of a few patrician families to any encroach- 
ment upon their privileges and honors. The com- 
mons or plebeians were not legally citizens, and 
it was the fixed policy of the patricians that they 
should not be. No plebeian might hold office, and 
the intermarriage of the two orders brought dis- 
grace and social degradation to the patrician, 
whether man or woman. At last the barrier fell, 
and the class pride gave way to the common pride 
in citizenship, which the consolidated Romans 
guarded as jealously from the Italians and pro- 
vincials as the patricians had fortified it against the 
plebs. 

To his rude manners, his superstitious mind, and 
his haughty demeanor the Romans added a stern- 
ness of spirit which at times deserves no better 
name than cruelty. Their history abounds in an- 
ecdotes of magistrates who sentence their sons 
to death, of generals who devote themselves to 
death to save their armies, of noble youths who 



Preliminary — Italy and Rome. 33 

throw away their lives to propitiate the offended 
gods, or who hold their right hands in the flames 
to prove to an alien king that torture has no ter- 
rors for a Roman. " Callousness to human suffer- 
ing was a Roman virtue," and the pages of history 
are red with Roman slaughterings. 

" As faithful as a Roman sentinel " is the world's 
highest tribute to fidelity, and, in truth, the Pom- 
peian soldier who was pelted to death at his post 
by the fiery hail of Vesuvius grandly typifies the 
steadfastness of the Roman character. It may 
have been the outcome of the stern discipline 
which the father in the family, the consul in the 
city, and the general in the army consistently en- 
forced, or it may have been an inborn virtue; but 
this splendid trait stands out in every relation of 
their common life and at every turn of their his- 
tory. In politics, under the name of "conserv- 
atism," it was this faculty of standing by settled 
principles which made the Roman constitution so 
slow in its development and so stable in its strength ; 
and in war it was this same firmness of purpose 
which enabled the single city to maintain itself 
against Greek, Celtic, and Carthaginian invasions, 
and, without the aid of conspicuous generals 
or remarkable statesmen, to drive the invaders 
out of Italy, pursue them to their homes, and 
vanquish them. 

Couple with the pertinacity of the Romans their 
exquisite political faculty and seek no farther for 
the sources of the Roman power. This faculty is 



34 



Outline Histoey of Rome. 



expressed in their respect for law and their cor- 
rect understanding and application of the prin- 
ciples of justice ; it is pre-eminently exhibited in 
the skill with which they adapted the constitution 
to the changing conditions imposed by the exten- 
sion of the Roman realm. These changes did not 
take place in popular convulsions, rending the State, 
but came through long periods of agitation, and 
finally as the result of compromise. 

From this description of the land and the peo- 
ple we pass on to their history. 




Rome Under the Kings. 35 



CHAPTER II. 

FIRST PERIOD. 

Rome Under the Kings. (244 Years.) 753- 

509 B. C. 

Whoever attempts to trace the history of an 
ancient State must come to a point in the remote 
past of which there are no written records. Yet 
the student of Roman history finds a detailed ac- 
count of what are professedly the acts of the peo- 
ple of the ancient city from the very day of its 
foundation. The record which confronts us is one 
which the Romans themselves made and believed. 
Their later historians used it with little doubt of 
its authenticity. Their poets went to it for ma- 
terial with which to adorn their patriotic verse. 
Even the European scholars seem to have accepted 
its statements as substantial truth until a little 
more than a century ago. The doubts which were 
then first quietly suggested were put forward in 
more positive form by the German historian, Nie- 
buhr (1776-1831), who proved, to the satisfaction 
of himself and many others, that the common 
account of the early Rome was rather poetry than 
history, and rested only upon a slight basis of truth. 
More recent investigation has modified Niebuhr's 



36 Outline History of Rome. 

conclusions, and the substance of modern belief is 
this : That the history of Rome previous to the 
fourth century before Christ is a fabric in which 
certain main outlines are true, while the masses 
of detail which make up the narrative are either 
greatly exaggerated or entirely imaginary. The 
argument for the rejection of the greater part of 
the story as it stands is unanswerable. It is rich 
in incredible marvels and miracles, its chronology 
is involved and inconsistent, and it relates as facts 
certain undoubted fables borrowed from the le- 
gends of other Aryan nations. Yet the ground- 
work of truth which underlies this quicksand of 
invention forbids the historian to disregard it. 
The legends will be given here at such length as 
the limits of the volume permit, and with the un- 
derstanding that they are not offered as genuine 
history. The fanciful narrative will be followed 
by the true story in the shape in which modern 
scholars believe it. 

The legends ran in this wise : 

After the Greeks had taken the city of Troy, in 
Asia Minor, iEneas, the son of Priam, the Trojan 
king, escaped, with many companions, and came 
by sea to the western coast of Italy, where he 
founded Lavinium, on the shore of Latium. For 
three hundred years the Trojan line ruled the 
Latin tribes, having their royal seat at Alba 
Longa, the " long white " city on the Alban Mount. 
In time two sons, Numitor and Amulius, were 
born to Silvius Procas, king of the Albans. The 



Rome Under the Kings, 



37 



latter usurped his brother's throne and consecrated 
his brother's daughter, Rhea Silvia, a vestal virgin, 
in order to extirpate the line of Numitor. But 
when, by the war god Mars, the vestal became the 
mother of twin sons, their cruel uncle had the 
babes thrown into the Tiber. 
The river was swollen with the 
spring floods and the boys floated 
ashore unharmed, and lodged in 
the branches of a fig-tree on the 
inundated meadow at the foot of 
a hill called Palatinus. A she- 
wolf took pity on them and nour- 
ished them with her whelps. In 
these strange surroundings the 
twins were discovered by a shep- 
herd of those regions, who adopted 
them out of pity. The boys were named Romulus 
and Remus, and lived among the herdsmen until 
they reached manhood, when they learned of their 
origin, killed their wicked uncle, and re-established 
their grandfather, Numitor, on the throne of the 
Albans. But the young princes had ambitions of 
their own, and, soon collecting a little colony, they 
founded a new city on the Palatine hill which Rom- 
ulus, favored by the gods, called from his own name 
Rome. April 21, 753 B. C, was the accepted date of 
this momentous act. The slighted Remus showed 
his derision of the puny defenses of his brother's city 
by leaping over its walls ; whereat Romulus, in his 
slew him, declaring that a similar fate 




Romulus. 



anger, 



38 Outline History of Rome. 

awaited all future assailants of the city. On the 
neighboring Capitoline Hill Romulus opened an 
" asylum " or refuge for the oppressed and discon- 
tented people of the surrounding country ; and as 
wives were wanting for the new settlers the Sa- 
bines of the neighboring town of Cures w^ere bid- 
den to a religious festival at Rome ; the Roman 
brigands seized the Sabine women while the 
husbands and brothers were witnessing the games. 
In the war which followed a Roman girl, Tarpeia, 
betrayed the city in return for " what the Sabine 
soldiers w r ore on their arms." But when she had 
let the Sabines inside the capitol they crushed the 
traitress with their heavy shields ; for these also 
did they wear on their arms as w r ell as the heavy 
bangles of gold w r hich had tempted the maiden. 
Thanks to the intervention of the Sabine women, 
this war ended in the union of the two tribes, and 
until his death the Sabine chief reigned jointly 
w r ith the Roman. After this Romulus framed a 
constitution for the State. A number of families 
were set apart to be the " patricians," or nobles, to 
distinguish them from the " plebeians," or commons, 
w T ho, though dwelling in the city, had no polit- 
ical power. The patricians were divided into three 
tribes — Ramnes, Tities, and Luceres — each tribe be- 
ing composed of ten w r ards or curlce. From the 
wisest patricians one hundred were chosen to form 
an advisatory council, or senate, to assist the king 
when called upon for their opinion, and from the 
younger nobles was levied the first legion — an army 



Rome Under the Kings. 



39 



of 3,000 foot and 300 horse. When the new con- 
stitution had been put in working order the gods 
caught up Romulus from the sight of the people, 
but his name was revered, and he was worshiped 
as a divinity ever afterward under the name of 
Quirinus, on the Quirinal Hill. 

For a year the throne was vacant before the 
Senate selected a worthy successor to the founder 
of the city. The choice fell 
upon a Sabine named Numa 
Pompilius, whose wife, the 
nymph Egeria, aided him 
much in his work of teach- 
' ing the people the principles ^) 
of morals and religion. He 
erected a temple to Vesta, 
the goddess of the home, 
and trained his subjects to 
be peaceful and pious. Dur- 
ing the forty-three years of 
his reign the city was pros- 
perous and happy. Numa Pompfiius. 

Tullius Hostilius, the third king, was a great 
warrior. It was in his time that Rome began 
her conquests. The first struggle was with the 
mother-city, Alba Longa. In this war three 
Roman and three Alban brothers, the Horatii and 
the Curiatii, fought as champions for their re- 
spective armies, and by stratagem the Romans 
won after two of the Horatii had already fallen. 
In the end Alba was taken and burned, Rome 




40 Outline History of Rome. 

succeeding to the older city's commanding place 
among the Latin towns. The warrior-king was 
rendered impious by his victories, and, although 
he fought stoutly for Rome against both the 
Etruscans and the Sabines, the offended gods 
destroyed him by a thunderbolt in the thirty- 
third year of his reign. 

The fourth monarch in the line was Ancus 
Martins, the descendant and disciple of the holy 
Numa. He was both brave and good. Under 
him the gods were reverenced and the boundaries 
of the city were enlarged. He extended its 
authority still farther among the Latin towns, and 
fortified the Janiculan Hill on the right bank of 
the Tiber as a stronghold against Etruscan attack. 
The houses of the city spread over the Aventine, 
now that his victories brought so many new resi- 
dents to Rome, and to its mouth the Tiber became 
a Roman river. 

Of the first four rulers of the city two had been 
of Roman, two of Sabine blood. The fifth king 
was Etruscan. Lucumo, a man whose Greek father 
had migrated from Corinth to the Etruscan town 
of Tarquinii, removed to Rome in the days of 
Ancus Martius with Tanaquil, his able wife. 
Prophetic intimations of coming glory were not 
wanting, and, Romanizing his foreign name to 
Lucius Tarquinius, the new-comer took hold of 
public affairs with an energy and wisdom which 
won the approval of the king. Ancus made the 
foreigner the guardian of his young sons, and at 



Rome Under the Kings. 41 

their father's death the Senate preferred the guard- 
ian to his wards and put the scepter in the hands 
of Lucius Tarquinius, commonly called Tarquinius 
Priscus, or " Tarquin the Ancient." He was a 
worthy follower of Ancus. His prowess in battle 
overcame the Etruscans, who sent to him the golden 
crown, the scepter, the purple robe, the ivory chair, 
and the fasces, which remained forever the em- 
blems of Roman authority. To conform the old 
constitution to the needs of the new metropolis 
the king doubled the number of senators and of 
the patrician tribes, and to make the city worthy 
of its rank he established annual games in the 
Circus Maximus, set apart the Forum for a public 
market and meeting-place, built the massive stone 
sewer, the Cloaca Maxima, which still drains the 
low ground between the hills, and commenced the 
erection of a temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline. 
Here the workmen dug up a human skull {caput), 
which was interpreted to mean that this spot was 
to be the capital of the world. Some of the 
ancient shrines were torn down to clear a space 
for the new temple; but the gods of youth and of 
boundaries resisted all attempts to remove them, 
and their chapels were left undisturbed, in token 
that the city should continually renew its vigorous 
youth and its boundaries should remain inviolate. 
Tarquinius was an able ruler, but the sons of 
Ancus could not forget that his influence with the 
Senate had cost them the throne to which they had 
a fancied claim. Moreover, as the king waxed old 



42 Outline History of Rome. 

they perceived that Servius Tullius, the son of a 
slave-girl of the palace, had found favor in his 
sight. In their jealous rage they had the aged 
king assassinated ; but before they could profit by 
their crime Tanaquil, the sagacious queen, had 
thwarted their plans. She addressed the people 
from the palace-steps, telling them that her hus- 
band had been attacked and dangerously wounded, 
and that Servius Tullius had the royal warrant to 
conduct the business of the kingdom until the 
monarch's recovery. Although coming to the 
throne in this irregular manner Servius gradually 
Avon to himself the support of both citizens and 
Senate. He was a statesman-like ruler, and, apart 
from his campaigns against the Etruscans, his 
labors were those of peace. In his time a wall was 
built inclosing the seven famous hills. But it is as 
a political reformer that this king is best remem- 
bered. His lowly birth seems to have given him 
sympathy with the plebeians, for it was by his 
constitution that they were first admitted to any 
share, however slight, in the government or de- 
fense of the city. Servius abolished the three 
patrician tribes and re-divided all the people into 
four tribes. Furthermore, and far more mem- 
orable, was his organization of the people into 
classes and centuries for military and political 
purposes. Admission to these classes depended 
upon the amount of property which an individual 
possessed, and was entirely independent of blood 
nobility. The wealthiest young men were chosen 



Rome Under the Kings. 43 

for cavalry duty, and were called equites (horse- 
men or knights). When the people were called to- 
gether to vote upon any public matter, such as a dec- 
laration of war, they assembled in accordance with 
this military order, and their gathering was called 
the Cornitia Centuriata, the Assembly of the Cent- 
uries. This assembly, existing side by side with 
the Senate, was for many hundred years the pop- 
ular branch of the Roman legislature. 

Tarquin the Ancient had left two sons, the gen- 
tle Aruns and the haughty Lucius. To these men 
King Servius married the two Tullias, his daugh- 
ters, who were as diversely tempered as their hus- 
bands. The match-making was wretchedly done, 
and eventually Lucius put to death his wife and 
brother and wedded his sister-in-law, a woman 
after his own heart. The pair then compassed the 
death of the good king, and it is said that Tullia, 
hastening to greet her husband with his new title, 
drove her chariot over the corpse of her gray- 
haired father as it lay in the public street. 

Lucius was the second of the Tarquins and the 
last of the kings. Superbus, "the Haughty," 
was the name he bore, and merited. For he 
walked not in the righteous statutes of his prede- 
cessor, but disregarded equally the old laws, the 
advice of the Senate, and the reformed constitu- 
tion. He enjoyed absolute sway, like the tyrants 
who were in power in Greece at the same period, 
and by his wars he placed Rome indisputably at 
the head of the league of Latin towns. With the 



44 



Outline History of Rome. 



spoils of his victories the city was adorned and 
the magic books of the Cumsean sybil were pur- 
chased. The king's successes hardened him in his 
iniquity, and the story runs that in his old age he 
sent his two sons and a nephew, Brutus, to Delphi 
in Greece to consult the oracle of Apollo, which had 
its temple there. Brutus was considered dull, but 
he secretly made a rich gift to the priestess and 

rightly interpreted her re- 
sponse to the question which 
the envoys put to the oracle 
regarding the next ruler of 
the city. "He shall rule who 
first shall kiss his mother," 
was the simple answer, and 
while the two Tarquins were 
hastening homeward and 
drawing lots for the privilege 
the dull Brutus stumbled and 
pressed his lips to the earth, 
the mother of all things. 
Afterward the king's wild son, Sextus Tarquin, 
dishonored Lucretia, the wife of his cousin. Then 
the injured husband, with Brutus and other pa- 
triots, aroused the people to rid themselves of the 
tyrant and his family. So the Romans shut the 
gates against the monarch and swore a solemn 
oath to have no more kings, but in their stead to 
elect each year two consuls, or colleagues, of 
equal authority, to rule in war and peace. A 
long war followed. The Tarquins hatched con- 




Lucius Junius Brutus. 



Rome Under the Kings. 45 

spiracies within the walls and instigated foreign 
invasions. Brutus, whom the citizens had made 
one of the first consuls, adjudged his own son 
to death for complicity in one of these plots. 
The people now banished the Tarquin family, 
root and branch, and took their corn-land, the 
Campus Martius, for a muster-field for the 
troops. Next the exiles sought Etruscan support, 
and the two cities, Tarquinii and Veii, aided 
them. Brutus fell in the great battle which the 
Romans fought near the wood of Arsia. Lars 
Porsena, the Etruscan king of Clusium, then be- 
friended the Tarquins. He marched on Rome 
with an army, drove the defenders within the 
walls, and would have captured the city had not 
Horatius Codes, with two more to help him, held 
the foe in play while the wooden bridge, which 
furnished the only approach to the city, was de- 
stroyed. Still Porsena besieged the city. Mucius 
Scsevola, a Roman youth, failed in an attempt to 
kill the king in his tent. Scaevola was seized and 
condemned to torture ; but to show his contempt 
of the sentence he thrust his right arm into the 
flame of an altar and held it steadily there until 
the hand was burned off. The king marveled at 
this exhibition of firmness and pardoned the boy. 
Then there was peace with the Romans, and the 
Tarquins had to turn from Porsena to the Latin 
towns for succor. The final contest was so des- 
perate that the Romans dared not risk the divided 
leadership of two consular generals. In the place 



46 Outline History of Rome. 

of the two magistrates they appointed a single 
commander-in-chief, or dictator, who had all the 
power of the old kings, but who held office for 
only six months at the longest. The first dictator, 
Marcus Valerius Public ola, fell in with the Latins 
near the shore of Lake Regillus, and beat them in 
a bloody battle, the good gods, Castor and Pollux, 
coming to lead the Roman legions just at the 
critical moment when their ranks had begun to 
waver before the mad charge of the last of the 
Tarquins. This ended the struggle of the exiled 
dynasty. The royal outlaw died at Cumae, and for 
five hundred years there was no king in Rome. 

So ends the legendary story of the kings. 

The historian has but a prosy substitute to offer 
for the interesting fables which were so long ac- 
cepted as the veritable annals of these early times. 
And it must be remembered, furthermore, that he 
is guided by no explicit records, and must state 
probabilities where the wished-for facts are want- 
ing. Overboard, then, with the cherished stories 
of Trojan JEneas, of Romulus and Remus, and of 
the seven kings, and clear the decks for action. 

Reference has already been made to the Italian 
race as the main division of the inhabitants of the 
peninsula, and it has been related that the western 
branch of this stock — the Latins — coming earlier 
or with greater power, took for their abode the 
hill-studded plain surrounded by the Tiber river, 
the Apennine mountains, and the Volscian hills, 
which here jut out along the Tuscan sea. It may 



Rome Under the Kings. 47 

have been a thousand years before Christ that this 
occupation took place, perhaps at the same time 
that Solomon was ruling at Jerusalem and Homer 
composing his Iliad in the Greek cities of Asia 
Minor. These Latins were of a clannish spirit, 
and agriculture was their only occupation. Thus 
the descendants of a common ancestor lived to- 
gether as a clan, and several clans tilling adjacent 
tracts combined for mutual advantage in a larger 
political body, or canton. Such a cantonal com- 
munity would center about a village in some spot 
easily capable of defense. To this citadel, for 
which a hill would furnish the most eligible site, 
the settlers would retire for safety in case of 
danger. There were hostile tribes in the imme- 
diate neighborhood, not only the dreaded Etrus- 
cans, but rough Sabines and Samnites from the 
mountain districts, and nearer yet the ^Equi, 
Hernici and Volsci. The common peril perhaps — 
even more probably a community of race, to which 
both language and religion bore witness — led the 
Latin cantons to form a league. Good evidence 
points to such a league of thirty members, the 
head of which was Alba Longa, itself a canton- 
center on the Alban mount, and probably the ear- 
liest Latin settlement in Latium. Here the Latins 
celebrated the annual festival of their race. 

One member of this league was Rome, the center 
of its own canton. When and by whom the city 
was really founded is now unknown. Strong 
probability there is that three independent com- 



48 Outline History of Rome. 

munities had their citadels on as many of the 
original hills of the city — the earliest on the 
Palatine, the others on the Capitoline and Quirinal 
— and that with characteristic political sagacity 
the people of the three hill-communities com- 
bined to form a single stronger city-state, called 
Rome, in which the original parts preserved their 
identity for many generations in the three tribes 
of Roman citizens — Ramnes, Tities and Luceres. 
There is some evidence to show that at least one 
of these uniting cantons was of Sabine race, thus 
accounting for the legends of a Sabine union in 
the reign of Romulus. This triple city, which by 
its later expansion added four other eminences to 
the original three, had now an advantage over the 
surrounding towns. Three hills were better than 
one ; a town on the river had more resources than 
a rural village ; a frontier post must be jealously 
defended, and a rude people could reap only gain 
from frequent contact with a more polished nation. 
So the Romans on the Tiber diversified their in- 
dustries, adding trade with the river region to the 
staple Latin occupation of farming and sheep- 
raising. The other Latins could not object if 
Rome fortified herself stoutty against the Etrus- 
cans, who were the foes of all ; and from her con- 
stant intercourse with these civilized foreigners 
the Romans grew in grace and in knowledge of the 
arts of war and peace. Thus we may believe that 
Rome became a border fortress and agricultural 
center, with some claim to commercial importance. 



Rome Under the Kings. 49 

But it would be a mistake to suppose that Rome 
was rich and powerful in the times of the kings. 
Her wars were waged and her victories were 
gained with isolated towns, and the name of the 
city was hardly known outside the little circle of 
the league. Indeed, it is scarcely probable that 
her entire possessions at the time of the expulsion 
of the kings — about five centuries before Christ — 
comprised more than a strip of territory a few 
miles in width extending from the city to the sea 
along the left bank of the Tiber. Her influence, 
however, was somewhat wider than her boundaries, 
for by this time (509 B. C.) Alba Longa had been 
destroyed and her place in the Latin league usurped 
by Rome. The Latin towns retained their inde- 
pendence and Rome was not in any sense their 
ruler, except of a few which she had taken in war; 
but hers was now the weighty voice in the general 
councils of the league, and she presided at the na- 
tional festival. At the close of this period, there- 
fore, Rome had not yet achieved the mastery even 
of her nearest neighbors, although she had taken 
the first steps in that direction. 

The government of Rome in the regal period is 
worthy of careful attention. Not all those who 
dwelt in the city were its legal citizens. The free 
population was composed of two distinct classes or 
orders : patricians and plebeians. The patrician 
order monopolized all political power and privilege. 
All offices of the State, all military commands (in- 
deed, all military service), all priestly and pontifi- 
4 



50 Outline History of Rome. 

cal positions, and all participation in the debates 
or voting of the public assemblies was restricted to 
these favored beings, The patricians (" children 
of the fathers " the name implies) were probably 
descended from the first settlers of these hills, and 
it was to them alone that the triple tribal classifi- 
cation into Ramnes, Tities, and Luceres applies. 
These three patrician tribes or communities were 
organized by families or households, ten families 
making up one clan or gens, ten clans one ward or 
curia, ten wards one community or tribus, although 
this decimal division was not strictly carried out. 
These three tribes formed the whole political body. 
In theory they were the only citizens, and it was 
of them alone that the term popuhis, "people," 
was rightly used. 

At the outset the patricians (and their slaves) 
were probably the only inhabitants, as well as 
the only citizens, of Rome; but as the city grew in 
power new residents were attracted. Latins were 
brought to Rome from conquered towns; other 
Latins were attracted to Rome for safety or for 
the commercial facilities which began to exist there ; 
and these men and their descendants made up the 
second Roman order, the plebeians — the word mean- 
ing the masses, the multitude, or the commons. 
Some plebeians were directly dependent upon the 
great patrician families, receiving support from 
them and making return in service — a condition 
not considered degrading, and certainly very far 
from slavery. These were called clients, and their 



Rome Under the Kings. 51 

patrician lords were their patrons. But by far the 
more numerous class were dependent upon no par- 
ticular patrician. They enjoyed the protection of 
the whole citizen body and were free from any seri- 
ous burdens of service or of taxation. They seem 
to have had large liberties in the city. They might 
buy and sell, and, if they could, get gain; they and 
their property were defended by the walls which the 
patricians had built, and their homes were guarded 
by the armies of the State, in which only patricians 
might serve. But politically they were not reckoned 
in the account at all. They were barred by law and 
custom from public career of any kind; there was 
no place which a plebeian might hold in the gov- 
ernment, the army, or the Church, and he had not 
even the right to vote at the election of his patri- 
cian ruler. There was a great gulf fixed between 
the two orders which no man might pass. Wealth 
furnished no means of bridging the chasm. Birth 
alone, or the interposing favor of the king, deter- 
mined his order. The intermarriage of the orders 
was illegal, and dragged the high-born party (man 
or woman) to the level of the plebeian. The ab- 
sence of political rights was, in itself, hard enough 
to bear, but the arrogance and insolence of the 
aristocrats rendered intolerable the lot of a high- 
spirited commoner. It is important to understand 
the position of these two orders, for the internal 
history of the city for many years turns upon the 
patrician resistance to the plebeian demand for ad 
mission to political and social equality. 



52 Outline History of Rome. 

Apart from, and far beneath both orders, stood 
the Roman slaves. Slavery existed in the city 
in very early times, and its victims continued to 
increase in numbers throughout the city's history. 
The supply was drawn from all countries. Pris- 
oners of war were naturally enslaved, and as Rome 
needed more servants than her conquests yielded 
she purchased them in the slave-markets of the 
East. Negro slaves were comparatively rare, but 
rough Gauls and Thracians herded with polished 
Greeks and Asiatics in the Roman slave-pens, and 
Syrians were chained with Egyptians at the oars 
of Roman triremes, and with them cultivated the 
soil of Campanian plantations. The slave-owner had 
power of life and death over his chattels, and often- 
times the condition of the Roman slave was horri- 
ble in the extreme, although a clement master 
would spare his human property. 

The legends doubtless say truly that the earliest 
government was a monarchy, varying somewhat 
in its character in the two or three centuries of its 
existence and coming to a close in the curious aris- 
tocratic republic known as the Roman Common- 
wealth. The organization of the patrician order 
and its exclusive political powers have already been 
noticed, and it is now time to inquire how this 
power was exercised. In the first place, the whole 
citizen-body (namely, the patricians), which was 
the source of authority in the State, held meetings 
from time to time called the Comitia Citriata, or 
Assembly of the Curies. Theoretically this assem- 



Rome Under the Kings. 53 

bly had high powers, but in practice it performed 
but a few duties in its own name. The most im- 
portant assembly was really the Senate, The sen- 
ators, at first one hundred, later three hundred 
in number, were the elders of the patrician order. 
Their experience in life fitted them especially for 
dealing with public questions, and it was upon 
them, therefore, rather than upon the Comitia 
Curiata, that the principal legislative duties de- 
volved. , The patricians who composed the Senate 
were picked men of the curies; so that the Senate 
may be looked upon as a highly competent execu- 
tive committee of the former assembly. The Sen- 
ate continued to be a leading feature of the Roman 
constitution through all its changes, and in its 
prime it represented in a high degree the energy 
and conservatism of the people, and was probably 
the most dignified and able body that the world 
has yet known. From its subordinate position as 
a royal council it came to wield a power of its 
own, and in the splendid days of the republic the 
force and intellect which ruled the city, directed 
war, and organized the whole known world into 
provinces, was the Roman Senate.* 

At the head of the patricians was the king (rex). 
He was the head of every department of the gov- 
ernment. With the advice, should he require it, 
but not necessarily with the consent of the Senate 



* The official title of the Roman Commonwealth was always Senatus 
Populttsque ROMANUS, "the Senate and the Roman people." The 
abbreviated form of the Latin being S. P. Q. R. 



54 Outline History of Rome. 

he published his edicts, which were the laws. Rep- 
resenting the citizen body much as the father of a 
Roman family represented his household, he acted 
as high-priest and the head of the State religion. 
Either in his own person or through deputies he 
presided in the law-courts, and in him rested the 
supreme command of the army. In all but one 
important particular point his sway was absolute : 
his power was derived from, and at his decease 
returned to, the people — not to his son, nor to any 
man of his selection. His term of office was for 
life, and he had no voice in the choice of his suc- 
cessor. When a king died the Senators in turn 
acted as vice-kings (inter-reges) until they could 
agree upon a new sovereign. The patrician whom 
the Senate selected had to receive the approval or 
ordination of the Comitia Curiata, and that body 
only could confer upon him the imperium — the 
right to rule in the city and the command of 
the army in the field. 

Such seems to have been the primitive govern- 
ment of Rome — two orders dwelling within the 
same city limits : a ruling order, conducting the 
business of government through the Comitia, the 
Senate, and indirectly through one of its own num- 
ber elevated to almost absolute power as king; the 
other order composed of freemen, destitute of politi- 
cal rights. Every new advance of Rome swelled 
the number of the plebeians. Their order gained 
by every successful war and by every new trad- 
er who settled in the city. The patrician order 



Rome Under the Kings. 55 

relied only upon natural causes for its growth, and 
even this increase was retarded by the compulsory 
military service which subjected the patricians 
alone to the ravages of frequent campaigns. Ex- 
cluded by law from camp and court and temple, the 
ambitious plebeian plunged into trade and agricult- 
ure. Roman energy and Roman brains were 
not the monopoly of the patricians, and there 
gradually arose among the plebeians a set of men 
whose achievements in private life encouraged 
them to ask a share in public affairs. Moreover, 
it was no easy matter for the small patrician order to 
bear all the burdens of war. From these two causes 
came the reform in the government which has been 
attributed to King Servius Tullius, and which is 
called the Servian Constitution. In order to di- 
vide the patrician military burden with the plebe- 
ians, and at the same time to admit the latter in a 
certain limited sense to an equality with the former, 
this memorable reform in the composition of the 
army was introduced. The three historic tribes were 
abolished and all the land-owning Romans who 
dwelt within the walls were included in four tribes, 
according to the region or city ward in which they 
lived. A census or numbering and valuation of 
the tribesmen was then taken, and from it a new 
muster-roll for the army was drawn up. All male 
property -holders between the ages of seventeen and 
sixty were divided into five classes. The first 
class comprised those who owned at least twenty 
jugera of tilled land. These men must present 



56 Outline History of Rome. 

themselves fully armed, and they were divided 
into eighty centuries (hundreds or companies) one 
half of them liable for field duty, the other half, 
composed of older men, being assigned to service 
as a reserve. The second class comprised twenty 
centuries similarly divided, Only fifteen jugera 
of land was the standard of admission to this class, 
and its members were not compelled to furnish a 
full suit of armor. The third, fourth, and fifth 
classes were computed on a similar scale. But 
the fifth class numbered twenty-eight centuries. 
These 168* centuries made up the infantry of the 
new army. The cavalry was recruited by levying 
twelve new centuries of the wealthiest young 
men, both patricians and plebeians, and adding 
these to the six patrician centuries of horse which 
had served in the old army. These rich equites 
(knights) cut a considerable figure in the later 
history of the city, the knights being always the 
representatives of the great capitalists. 

In the new army, then, the two orders stood for 
the first time side by side. Both were taxed for 
its support, both were subjected to its hardships, 
both shared its glories. The plebeian, although 
still far removed from the right to hold political 
office, was at last recognized as of some account 
in the State. In the army he might even rise to 
the rank of centurion or military tribune, and ex- 
ercise authority, petty though it was, over such pa- 
tricians as chanced to form the rank and file. 

This military organization of Servius Tullius 



Rome Under the Kings. 57 

was the source of the first political rights which 
the plebeians obtained; for to this army, com- 
posed of both orders, the king submitted pro- 
posals concerning war. There was no debate, 
probably no formal voting; but in some rude 
way, by shout or by clash of shield and spear, the 
people made known their approval or dissent. It 
was this assembly of the people by centuries 
which developed into the Comitia Centuriata of 
republican times, the powerful citizen body which 
elected most of the magistrates and possessed 
high legislative authority. Under the kings, how- 
ever, this assembly was probably devoid of politi- 
cal power beyond the slight degree which has just 
been referred to, the Senate of elders and the 
Assembly of the Curies (Comitia Curiata), both 
thoroughly patrician, being still the recognized 
legislative bodies. 

The first essential change in the form of gov- 
ernment sprang not from plebeian oppression, but 
from the ambition of the kings. The student of 
the legends has noticed a strain of violence and 
despotism running through the stories of the later 
kings. The monarch is no longer the revered judge 
and priest of the people, but has become a military 
leader. The throne no longer descends peacefully 
to the patrician whom the Senate nominates and 
whom the curies and the gods approve. The 
monarch contrives that the succession shall remain 
in his own family or to a man of his own selection. 
The Tarquins are foreigners, Etruscans, and they 



58 Outline History of Rome. 

introduce foreign customs, outlandish symbols of 

rovaltv, and seem to have ruled over Etruria as 

t. ■ 

well as Rome. From these and other indications 
it is concluded that at one time Rome succumbed 
to the manv attacks of its enemies north of the 
Tiber and was forced to accept a foreign ruler. 
These Tarquins, the Etruscan kings of Rome, dis- 
regarded Senate and patrician assemblies and ruled 
as despots. Their absolute power and their mili- 
tary skill placed Rome at the head of the Latin 
towns, but bred dissatisfaction and revolution. 
The Tarquins resembled the tyrants who were at 
the same time lording it over the cities of Greece, 
adorning them with splendors of architecture but 
depriving them of their liberties. This military 
despotism ended in revolt. Lucretia's dishonor and 
the patriotism of Brutus may be fictions, but the 
fact is indubitable that the citizens rose against 
the kings at last, in 509 B. C. the legends say. 

The causes of the overthrow of the kings are in 
plain sight. The king had gained his despotic 
power at the expense of the patricians. The plebe- 
ians had nothing to lose. The patricians had been 
the State. Kino: and Senate were of their own 
number and governed in their interest. A usurp- 
ing foreign king, who disregarded the advice 
the Senate and treated the curies with contempt, 
was intolerable to their order. The arrogance of 
Tarquinius Superbus hastened the crisis. The 
kings were expelled after a long war which weak- 
ened the city and degraded it from its leadership 



Rome Under the Kings. 



59 



in Latium. But the persistence with which the 
people maintained the struggle against the Tar- 
quins and their Latin and Etruscan allies is evi- 
dence of the sincerity of their hatred. In after 
times the very name of king was accursed in the 
city, and there was no surer way of crushing a 
public man than to spread the report that he 
aimed to make himself king. The republic which 
succeeded the monarchy lasted for nearly five 
hundred years and passed through many changes. 
Within that time many men strove to seize the 
chief power in the State, but no man dared to 
wear the crown. Even Caesar, who put an end to 
the republic and was the virtual sovereign of the 
empire, refused the name of king, in deference, 
doubtless, to this persistent hatred. 

In another chapter we shall see how the patri- 
cians endeavored to secure for themselves the 
sovereignty in the republic. 




60 Outline History of Rome. 



CHAPTER III. 

SECOND PERIOD. 

The Roman Republic. (478 years.) 509- 
31 B. C. 

The traditional date of the expulsion of the 
Roman kings is 509 B. C, and it is an accepted 
fact that the empire was established in the year 
31 B. C. Throughout the intervening period of 
four hundred and seventy-eight years Rome was a 
republic. 

The history of these times may be divided for 
convenience into three parts ; namely, 

I. 509-264 B. C. — The rise of the plebeians in 
the city and the rise of Rome in Italy. 

II. 264-133 B. C. — The Punic wars and foreign 
conquests. 

III. 133-31 B. C— The civil wars. Conquests 
abroad. The fall of the republic. 

These three divisions will be considered in turn, 
and it will be shown how the republican city con- 
solidated its own elements of strength, united Italy 
with Roman cement, crushed its civilized rivals — 
Carthage, Corinth, Asia — repelled barbarian in- 
vasion, conquered the Gauls in their own lands, 
and then, in full possession of wealth and power 



The Roman Republic. — I. 61 

extraordinary, fell upon times of corruption and 
civil disorder which ended in the overthrow of the 
republic by Julius Caesar, who founded a mon- 
archy to maintain the conquests which the com- 
monwealth had made. 

Part I. (509-264 B. C.) 

THE RISE OF THE PLEBEIANS IN THE CITY AND THE 
RISE OF ROME IN ITALY. 

The first historian of Rome, Quintus Fabius 
Pictor, was born after the close of this period, and 
the modern student is dependent upon histories 
which were written from three to five centuries 
after the occurrence of the events which they nar- 
rate. Consequently the early chapters of the re- 
public are almost as rich in fanciful legends as were 
the stories of the kings. The chief sources from 
which the Roman writers made up their narratives 
were the annals kept by the priestly colleges, the 
lists of anniversary holidays, the laws and treaties 
preserved on metal tablets in the temples, and the 
private records of the patrician families, who pre- 
served with jealous pride the names of their an- 
cestors who had held high office in the State. 

In the histories of Livy and Dionysus this frame- 
work of fact is so lavishly upholstered with legend- 
ary material that it is often difficult to detect the 
truth amid its false surroundings. Many of the 
legends have become familiar in literature, and for 
that reason some of them will be repeated here, 
with due warning to the reader. 



62 Outline History of Rome. 

The period before us has two aspects. At one and 
the same time two changes were taking place in 
the Roman State. Within the city her people, 
patrician and plebeian, were fighting face to face 
for political equality. Without the walls patricians 
and plebeians were fighting side by side to extend 
the authority of the city over the Italian penin- 
sula. In following the two lines of development 
the scene will change more than once. 

The Roman monarchy had been aristocratic. 
The elective king was a patrician — that is, of 
" noble " blood ; his council, the Senate, was ex- 
clusively patrician ; he was the pope of the pa- 
trician priesthood and the leader of the patrician 
army. The plebeians dwelt in the city, but had 
no part nor lot in public affairs. 

When the Tarquins made themselves absolute 
rulers the patricians, angry at their loss of influ- 
ence, headed a revolution and drove out the kings 
forever. The government which they set up was 
as thoroughly patrician as its founders dared to 
make it. The chief magistracy was bestowed 
upon two patrician consuls of equal authority, w^ho 
held office for a single year. The chief priest- 
hood was given to a patrician, " king of the sac- 
rifices," and much of the judicial and financial 
authority fell to two quaestors, also patricians. In 
case of extreme peril the consul might proclaim a 
dictator, who was in fact absolute king for the six 
months, to which his authority was limited. This 
officer appointed his own lieutenant (magister 



The Roman Republic. — I. 63 

equitum, or " master of the horse "), and was 
chosen, like the other magistrates, from the patri- 
cian order. 

The Senate of the earlier period was little 
changed by the revolution. But its numbers fell 
off in the wars with the banished kings, and the 
new consuls filled up the ranks with men from the 
rich families. It is believed that there were ple- 
beians among the families thus ennobled, but it is 
uncertain whether the plebeian senators came at 
once into the full senatorial dignity and privilege. 

In the monarchical system there had been but 
one assembly of the citizens — the Comitia Curiata 
— based on the triple tribal division into the patri- 
cian Ramnes, Tities, and Luceres. In the republic 
this assembly survived, but its power sank with 
the rise of the plebeians until it came to deal only 
with exclusively patrician matters. Besides this 
ancient Assembly of the Curies two other comitia, 
or assemblies, grew until they usurped its powers 
and overshadowed its importance. The elder of 
these was the Comitia Centuriata, or Assembly of 
the Centuries. The organization of the land-own- 
ing Romans of both orders for military purposes 
took place under the kings. It was the great 
feature of the reform of Servius Tullius. In 
essence it enlarged the body of Roman citizens 
by admitting to service in the army and to petty 
military office the land-owning plebeians. The 
centuries, or hundreds, were at first purely military 
bands, and had no other voice in affairs of state 



64 Outline History of Rome. 

than the simplest expression of opinion upon 
the question of declaring war. In itself this 
was little ; in its possibilities of expansion it was 
much ; for it was the first recognition of the polit- 
ical existence of the plebeians. The distribution 
of the citizens in the centuries and the methods of 
voting gave the rich classes a preponderating in- 
fluence in this body, so that, although the centuries 
included both orders, the ancient aristocracy con- 
trolled its action. The military Comitia Centuriata 
of Servius became the great popular assembly of 
the republic. The right of electing the chief 
magistrate was transferred from the curies to the 
centuries, and the course of appeal from the con- 
sul's death sentence was similarly altered. It was, 
perhaps, a little later that the Assembly of the 
Centuries actually gained the right of accepting 
or rejecting the bills proposed to them by the con- 
sul. This right, early secured, made this mixed 
assembly a law-making body, or legislature ; but it 
differed from most law-making bodies in its com- 
position. It was not a representative body ; its 
members were not elected ; every man represented 
himself alone, and in theory the Assembly of the 
Centuries included every Roman land-owner, the 
only distinctions being those of property. 

In addition to the old patrician Assembly of the 
Curies and the newly enfranchised Assembly of the 
Centuries there originated somewhat later a third 
and (perhaps) purely plebeian body, the Assembly 
of the Tribes, or Comitia Tribute. These tribes 



The Roman Republic. — I. 65 

were not the three ancient aristocratic divisions, 
but were rather districts of the city and its sub- 
urbs, at first twenty in number, later twenty-one, 
and finally thirty-live. How this assembly began 
is extremely doubtful, but it rose with the rise of 
the plebeians, who constituted its membership, 
and it ultimately became co-equal in power with 
the Assembly of the Centuries. 

The patricians had been the chief gainers from 
the expulsion of the kings. They had secured 
patrician magistrates and generals, a patrician 
senate and priesthood, and patrician supremacy in 
the Assembly of the Centuries; even the admission 
of the plebeians to the army was a gain for the 
aristocrats. The long struggle with the exiled 
Tarquins, which the legendary story embellishes 
with the great deeds of Horatius, Porsena, and 
Scaevola, and which closed with the memorable 
victory at Lake Regillus, brought great misery to 
the common soldiers of the lower " classes." They 
were the owners of small farms, which suffered 
from the absence of their proprietors in the wars. 
The soldier served without pay. Debt was inev- 
itable. The Roman law gave the debtor to his 
creditor as a slave. The booty of successful war 
went to the State, and, the. patricians had the 
use of its fruits. Public land (ager publicus) 
acquired by conquest was leased to the patrician 
land-holders, but the rents were carelessly col- 
lected, and the patrician to whom the lands were 
assigned often clung to possession as if they were 
5 



66 Outline History of Rome. 

his by grant or purchase. Great farms grew up, 
tilled by slave-labor, and the small farmers, be- 
tween debt and military service, were driven to 
despair and revolt. 

In 494 B. C. the plebeians of the army, return- 
ing from a successful campaign, encamped on a 
height overlooking the junction of the Tiber and 
Anio rivers, and declared their independence. They 
determined to rid themselves of patrician oppres- 
sion by abandoning Rome and founding a plebeian 
city on the site of their encampment. Their num- 
bers and spirit were a menace to Rome, and the 
aristocrats were forced to a compromise. The 
seceders re-entered Rome, but they came as vic- 
tors. Their debts were forgiven, their revolt went 
unpunished, and they were given — what they had 
never had before — magistrates of their own. 
Plebeians were not admitted to any of the existing 
offices, but Tribunes of the People (at first, per- 
haps, only two, like the consuls, afterward five, 
and still later ten), were given them to preside at 
plebeian meetings and to champion the rights of 
the commons at all times and places except in the 
army. The tribunes were elected by the plebeians 
themselves, in what assembly at first is doubtful, 
but after 472 surely in the Comitia Tributa. They 
had the right of veto upon the acts of all magis- 
trates and assemblies. They could not be legally 
prosecuted during their year of office, and their 
houses were a legal refuge for plebeians charged 
with crime. The rights of veto and of protection 



The Roman Republic. — I. 67 

were enormous concessions on the patrician side, 
and from this time the contest of the orders 
was hotly waged. Plebeian aediles were elected to 
assist the tribunes and supervise the markets. 
The hill where the plebeians had encamped was 
afterward known and honored by that order as 
the Sacred Mount (mons sacer), and the whole 
episode is called "The First Secession of the Plebs." 

In the disorders of the revolution and the seces- 
sion Rome lost her place at the head of Latium. 
The legends indicate that the Etruscans were for 
a time victorious over the Romans, and after their 
retreat the various tribes of Latium were at war 
with their former leader. The Latins and the 
Romans combined against the neighboring Sa- 
bines, iEqui, Volsci, and Etruscans, and almost 
every year had its campaign. Incessant wars again 
impoverished the plebeians ; and it is said that in 
a year of famine (491 B. C.) Coriolanus, consul at 
Rome, sought to induce the plebeians to give up 
the tribunate in return for free grants of grain from 
the State. For this and for contempt of court he 
was banished, and, joining the Volscians, afterward 
led them against Rome, and would have sacked the 
town had not his Roman wife and mother saved 
it by their tearful entreaties. To separate her 
enemies, the Volsci and iEqui, Rome allied herself 
to the Hernici (486 B. C), thus contributing much 
to the re-establishment of her former strength. 

Notwithstanding the concessions of the sacred 
law the condition of the poorer people of Rome 



68 Outline History of Rome. 

was rendered worse and worse by the incessant 
wars. Much military duty, with no pay and scanty 
harvests, drove the farmers into bankruptcy, which 
meant ruin. The public lands continued in the 
possession of the patricians or the equally greedy 
plebeian capitalists. Slaves increased in numbers 
and the value and dignity of free labor declined. 
In 486 B. C. Spurius Cassius, consul, proposed a 
land-law, or " Agrarian law," the first of many by 
which it was sought to curb the greed of the 
wealthy Romans. This bill provided that all 
public lands should be surveyed and a portion of 
them be leased for the profit of the State. The 
remainder should be distributed freely among 
needv citizens of both orders and among the Latin 
allies. The last clause aroused the jealousy and 
pride of the Romans. They would admit no 
Latin to a share in Roman privileges. The cry 
was raised that the consul was thus purchasing 
popularity, meaning to make himself king, and the 
wise man who had generously prescribed the only 
remedy for the ills of the city was denounced as a 
traitor, condemned, and executed. So the ple- 
beians gained nothing. 

Still there was discord in the city. One patri- 
cian family — the Fabii — went into exile to shun the 
strife, and met death at the brook Cremera at the 
hands of the Etruscans (477 B. C). Four years 
later a tribune was murdered, in spite of his inviol- 
ability, because he had used his legal power against 
two patrician consuls. In 472 B. C. the Publilian 



The Roman Republic. — I. 09 

law confirmed the right of the plebeians to elect 
their magistrates in the Comitia Tributa, which 
was either exclusively plebeian or under plebeian 
control. Thus for fifty years the lower order held 
what it had gained. But its position was insecure. 
The laws were made for and by the patricians, 
and in most cases interpreted by patrician magis- 
trates. In 462 B. C. the Tribune Terentilius de- 
manded that the body of unwritten law be revised 
by a commission, reduced to its simplest form, 
and published so that it might be known and read 
of all men. The patricians succeeded in post- 
poning this reform for a decade. To pacify the 
plebeians they increased the number of tribunes to 
ten, and divided the unoccupied grounds on the 
Aventine Hill among the poorer families. But the 
demand was only deferred, and in 451 B. C. it was 
granted. The patricians gave up their consuls 
and the plebeians their tribunes, and the consular 
power was given for the space of one year to a 
committee of ten, the Decemvirs (Decemviri), 
chosen from the patricians. A second board of 
Decemvirs, this time including three plebeians, was 
elected for the year 450 B. C. The Decemvirs 
formulated a code of twelve laws, which were ac- 
cepted by the people, and then published on brass 
tablets, which were posted in the city square. 
These Laws of the Twelve Tables were not new 
legislation, but their principles served to fix the 
hitherto doubtful or arbitrary decisions of the pa- 
trician magistrates, and were thus a great benefit. 



70 Outline History of Rome. 

The work of the Decemvirs was done, but the 
enjoyment of power was too sweet to be freely 
put aside ; accordingly they continued in office in 
449 B. C., and with Appius Claudius at their head 
ruled as tyrants. The legends tell of their murder 
of Lucius Dentatus, the bravest soldier of Rome, 
and of the attempted abduction of the fair Vir- 
ginia by Appius. These outrages led the plebeians 
to retire to the Sacred Mount, the scene of their 
former victory. The second secession was equally 
profitable. The moderate aristocrats effected an 
arrangement for the re-establishment of consuls 
and tribunes. The Decemvirs abdicated and died 
in prison or abroad, and the plebeians returned to 
Rome (448 B. C), where the Valerio-Horatian laws 
still further fortified their position. This legisla- 
tion (1) endorsed the Laws of the Twelve Tables ; 
(2) compelled every magistrate to allow a con- 
demned man to appeal to the Assembly of the 
Centuries ; (3) allowed the tribunes to inflict 
fines ; (4) established two additional patrician 
quaestors as treasurers of the military funds ; 
(5) allowed the tribune to witness the proceed- 
ings of the Senate and interpose his veto ; (6) re- 
asserted the inviolability of the tribunes, invoking 
a curse on their assailants. 

Success emboldened the plebeians. They knew 
their value to the city's prosperity, and their de- 
mands grew in number and audacity. In 445 B. C. 
the law of Canuleius bridged the gulf between the 
orders by legalizing the marriage of patricians 



The Roman Republic. — I. 71 

and plebeians. The same tribune proposed, three 
quarters of a century in advance of his time, that 
the consulate be opened to the plebeians. This 
was denied ; but the patricians devised a make- 
shift by which the assembly might decide in any 
year to elect six military tribunes, with consular 
power, in place of the two patrician consuls. 
To this new tribunate both orders were eligible. 
Thus the aristocracy were compelled to grant in 
reality what they attempted to deny. They 
would not admit their rivals to the consulate; but 
they would not exclude them from the consular 
tribunate, which had almost equal power. To 
save their dignity still farther the patricians 
established a new office of their own. Hitherto 
the consuls had taken the census of the citizens — 
an enrollment which determined the standing of 
the individual in the Assembly of the Centuries 
and in the Senate. To withhold the control of the 
Senate from the possibly plebeian influence of the 
consular tribunes the censorship was created. 
Two censors, both patricians, were chosen by the 
centuries, and clothed with power to take the 
census every five years, and compile the lists of 
citizens, senators, and knights. They had the 
responsible supervision of the State revenues and 
expenditures, and were charged with the oversight 
of public morals. 

In 421 B. C. the office of quaestor, hitherto pa- 
trician, was first opened to the plebeians. This was 
significant of the end, for it was the first of the 



72 Outline History of Rome. 

ordinary magistracies for which they were made 
eligible. Three of them had been decemvirs and 
others had gained consular rank as military trib- 
unes, but they had been debarred the ancient hon- 
ors which the qusestorship now opened to them. 

From 405 to 396 B. C. Rome w T as engaged in a 
duel with Veii, a strong town of southern Etruria. 
The w^ar was as fruitful of prodigies as the famous 
siege of Troy by the Greeks, and the Romans, who 
were eventually successful under the leadership of 
Camillus, told wonderful stories of their own he- 
roic deeds. It was in this prolonged campaign 
that the citizen soldiery of Rome first received 
pay, the army remaining in the field all winter. 
The fall of Veii was a heavy blow to Etruscan 
prosperity, but her countrymen could neither lend 
aid to the city nor avenge its destruction, for 
their entire State was threatened by an invasion 
from the north. The Gauls, a Germanic tribe, 
had long before entered the valley of the Po and 
driven the Etruscans into their historic limits. 
Hither they followed them, and the aid which 
Roman envoys gave to the men of Clusium pro- 
voked the barbarians to declare war on Rome itself. 
The annals relate that the Gauls routed the Roman 
army on the brook Allia, a few miles from Rome, 
July 18, 390 B. C. The citizens fled, only a few 
remaining to guard the Capitoline temples. The 
Gauls burned the city, murdered the steadfast 
senators, and, had it not been for the cackling of 
Juno's geese, would have surprised and sacked the 



The Roman Republic. — I. 73 

citadel. It is believed that Brennus, the Gaulish 
chief, was bribed to abandon the siege ; but tradi- 
tion has it that Camillus, " the second founder of 
Rome," surprised and defeated the besiegers. 
Then the citizens returned after considering the 
question of abandoning the ruins and planting a 
new Rome at Veii. The Gauls proceeded south- 
ward, and in the following years often threatened, 
but never took, the city. At last they settled in 
the Po valley and adopted the Roman civilization. 

The long war with the people of Veii and the 
disastrous inroads of the plundering Gauls in- 
creased the miseries of the poorer citizens and 
hastened the means of relief. The debt and des- 
titution of the plebeian poor touched the hearts of 
individuals in both orders. In 439 B. C. Spurius 
Maelius, a plebeian, was killed by Ahala, a high 
officer, for distributing grain to the needy. The 
patricians slew him for his ambition. In 384 B. C, 
Manlius, who had kept the Capitoline against the 
Gauls, was thrown from its cliffs as a punishment 
for paying the debts of bankrupt plebeians. The 
patricians said he wanted to be king. But isolated 
executions could not suppress the popular cry for 
equal political rights and equal justice in regard 
to the public lands. In 376 B. C. the popular 
demand took form in the propositions of the 
tribunes, Licinius and Sextius, which in 367 B. C. 
were accepted by the assembly and became the 
famous Licinian laws. 

It was enacted : (1) That the office of consular- 



14 Outline History of Rome. 

military tribune should be abolished, and that at 
least one of the two annually elected consuls must 
be a plebeian ; (2) that plebeians should be admit- 
ted to priesthoods of a certain class. These two 
laws equalized the political status of the two or- 
ders and realized one of the objects for which the 
plebeians had battled since 510 B. C. Further- 
more (3) it was enacted that no one should occupy 
more than a certain share of the common pasture- 
lands or till more than three hundred acres of the 
State domain ; (4) that freemen, as well as slaves, 
must be employed on every estate ; and (5) that 
interest already paid on debts should be deducted 
from the principal. 

The patricians made futile attempts to nullify 
this legislation. As they had established the 
censorship to keep certain privileges away from 
the plebeian military tribunes, they now created a 
new office, the prcetorship. The praetor, who must 
be a patrician, was to act as consul in the absence 
of those magistrates, and was at all times to act 
as a judge in the highest court of the city. Two 
curule sediles, also patricians, were likewise ap- 
pointed to manage the Roman games and public 
markets. But these offices did not long remain 
the exclusive property of the old aristocracy. One 
after another they were yielded to the commons. 
The Licinian law legalized plebeian consuls; in 356 
B. C. the dictatorship was opened to plebeians; in 
351 B. C. the restrictions were removed from the 
censorship; in 339 B. C. the Publilian law ordered 



The Roman Republic. — I. 75 

that one of the censors must be a plebeian ; in 
337 B. C. the commons were made eligible to the 
prsetorship ; in 300 B. C. the Ogulnian law ad- 
mitted plebeians to office in the priestly colleges of 
the augurs and pontifices ; and in 287 B. C. the 
Hortensian law, brought about by the third seces- 
sion of the plebs, established the decrees of the 
plebeian Assembly of Tribes (Comitia Tributa), as 
of equal authority with the laws passed by the 
whole body of citizens in the Assembly of the 
Centuries [Comitia Centuriata). 

The Licinian law, with its sequels, the Publilian, 
Ogulnian and Hortensian laws, broke down the bar 
which had divided the Roman orders. The dis- 
tinction still survived in the pride of the patrician 
families, but in politics the orders were equal. All 
the honors of State and Church were open to the 
plebeians ; the resolutions of their assembly were 
the laws of the State; their consuls led the armies; 
their senators sat and voted with the representa- 
tives of the ancient houses. The enormous changes 
which this chapter summarizes came to pass through 
a period of two hundred years. Considered in the 
aggregate they represent a complete revolution in 
the Roman constitution. It is the spectacle of a 
subject class extorting not only liberty but privi- 
lege and power from its superiors, and gaining an 
equal share in the government. Similar results 
have been achieved in other countries, notably in 
France, but the Romans alone possessed that po- 
litical faculty which secured this revolution without 



76 Outline History of Rome. 

anarchy. The struggle for the equalization of the 
orders was fiercely contested, but it was fought in 
legal forms, not with fire and sword, and the many 
years that preceded its consummation were so many 
years of education in those qualities of self-control 
which enabled the new Rome to master the world. 
While the constitution of the city was in this 
stage of its development (367-287 B. C.) Rome 
was engaged in a series of wars. She had no 
longer to fight for her existence. Her supremacy 
in Latium was again recognized as it had been in 
the times of the kings, and she made leagues of 
equality with the Latins and Hernicans. Until 
the wandering Gauls settled themselves upon the 
plains of Lombardy their forays brought them into 
frequent contact with the Romans, but they never 
again approached the walls of the city. With the 
repulse of the Gauls, and the submission of the 
Latin and Hernican towns, three rival national- 
ities under Rome remained in the peninsula. In 
closest contact were the Etruscans, weakened by 
the loss of Veii and suffering from Gaulish raids. 
West and south of Rome were the Italians (see p. 
22), of whom the Samnites, rude farmers though 
they were, were the leading division. Related to 
the Samnites were the Volsci and JEqui, whose 
lands adjoined the Latins. The third j>eople were 
the Hellenes of Magna Grecia ; luxurious, cult- 
ured, and indolent, abounding in resources but 
deficient in patriotism, and cursed by the political 
incapacity of their race. In one hundred years 



The Roman Republic. — I. 77 

(375-275 B. C.) Rome mastered all three races — 
Etruscan, Samnite, and Greek. 

Etmria was in disorder, and its cities fell one by 
one until the entire southern section of the coun- 
try, with the cities of Tarquinii, Caere, and Falerii, 
was subject to Rome (351 B. C). It was, perhaps, 
this success which led Carthage, the African city 
which was then one of the great powers of the 
world, to form a treaty with the victor (348 B. C). 
Rome's next campaigns (350-345 B. C.) were 
against the Volscians and their kindred Italians 
on the south, and resulted in a further extension 
of Roman power. In these campaigns the Roman 
military formation was re-organized. The infant- 
ry of the legion was divided into thirty maniples 
of three centuries each. These fought in triple 
line of battle, the first two rows being armed with 
sword and spear, the third with long lances. 

The Roman power, which had suffered much 
from Gaul and Tuscan, was now in the ascendant. 
The support of her alliance was now sought by 
distant tribes. A treaty of this sort precipitated 
the inevitable struggle with the Samnites. Two 
truces divide the conflict into the three Samnite 
wars. The first was of little importance. Begin- 
ning in 343 B. C. with an alliance between Rome 
and Capua, it lasted till 341 B. C, when the Sam- 
nites were distracted by a Greek attack in their 
rear and the Romans by a revolt of the Latins. 
Rome gained the pleasant city of Capua in the 
settlement. 



78 Outline History of Rome. 

The Latin war (340-338 B. C.) was the protest 
of the Latin towns against Roman exclusiveness. 
Romans and Latins had fought side by side as 
allies, but Rome had claimed the spoils of the vic- 
tory. The city was prospering and growing in 
power and wealth, and the Latins demanded a 
share in its government. They saw the first tri- 
umphs of the plebeians, and they raised a cry for 
equal recognition in the affairs of the city. But 
it was a fundamental doctrine of the Roman re- 
public to restrict as far as possible the rights of 
citizenship to actual inhabitants of the city. The 
war resulted in the complete victory of the Romans; 
the Latin league was dissolved. Its cities made 
separate treaties with Rome and were cut off from 
direct intercourse with each other. Roman gar- 
rison towns (colonies) were planted among them 
and the Latin State was at an end. 

In 326 B. C. the second Samnite war began. 
It lasted, with varying fortunes, until 305 B. C, 
and involved nearly all the nations of the penin- 
sula. The mountaineers were led by the Samnite, 
Gavius Pontius, who (321 B. C.) entrapped both 
the consular armies in the pass near Caudium, 
known as the "Caudine Forks," and compelled the 
consuls to accept a treaty, which, however, the 
Senate rejected. The Etruscans took sides with 
the Samnites (in 312 B. C), but were beaten at 
the Vadimonian Lake (310 B. C). Gradually 
the Samnites were deprived of their allies, and in 
305 B. C. their capital, Bovianum, surrendered 



The Roman Republic. — I. 79 

to the Romans. Peace was made on equal 
terms. 

Although the Romans had gained in these wars 
their stubborn foe was by no means subjugated. 
Rome occupied the seven years which elapsed be- 
fore the third outbreak by strengthening her own 
position. In Latium she forced the subject tribes 
to accept a form of citizenship which was like that 
of the plebeians two centuries earlier. They were 
citizens without suffrage — that is, they served in 
Roman armies and paid taxes to Rome, but could 
not vote in the city assemblies nor hold Roman 
office. Throughout the conquered territory that 
peculiar institution, the Roman colony, was 
planted. Roman citizens, soldiers with their 
wives and children, were assigned lands near the 
conquered towns, and removed thither. These 
colonists retained their full rights as citizens of 
Rome, and when in the mother city might vote 
in the assemblies. In their new homes they were 
not only garrisons, but centers of Roman influ- 
ence in every way, contributing to the extension 
of Latin language and Roman law, by which the 
races of the peninsula were brought into union. 
To facilitate communication between the scattered 
colonies, and to furnish means for the rapid trans- 
portation of troops, the Senate authorized the con- 
struction of a grand system of military roads. 
These perfect highways, some of which may yet 
be traced, were extended as fast as the conquests 
permitted, Before the third Samnite war a large 



80 Outline History of Rome. 

part of the Appian Way (via Appia), which was 
to connect Rome and Brundisium, was built, and 
two northern roads, the Flaminian and Valerian, 
were constructed into the heart of the Samnite 
mountains. 

The mountaineers perceived the significance of 
these operations, and formed alliances with the 
Etruscans and Gauls of the north and the southern 
Italians, preparatory to a decisive struggle against 
Rome. The third Samnite war lasted from 298 
B. C. to 290 B. C, and the Romans won bv strik- 
ing the members of the league in turn before they 
could unite. In the great battle of Sentinum the 
Gauls and Samnites were defeated by the Roman 
consuls. The allies fell away, but the Samnites 
held out five years longer, until 290 B. C. They 
gained honorable terms of peace, but were so 
weakened that they no longer stood between Rome 
and the supremacy of Italy. 

The Roman conquests were rapidly secured by 
strong colonies and fine roads. Roman influences 
had now reached southern Italy, and a three-years' 
war, with an alliance of Italian tribes (285-282 
B. C), ended in the partial destruction of the 
Gaulish Senones and the establishment of Roman 
garrisons in several cities of Great Greece. Ta- 
rentum, a proud and wealthy city of this neigh- 
borhood, jealous of the Roman advance, attacked 
a Roman fleet and led to war (282 B. C). Pyr- 
i&us, the King of Epirus, came with elephants and 
a great army to aid the Tarentine Greeks. The 



The Roman Republic. — I. 81 

Romans refused to yield, though dismayed by the 
force which confronted them. Their army was 
beaten at Heraclea (280 B. C), and again at As- 
culum (279 B. 0.). But the result was indecisive. 
The Roman allies joined Pyrrhus, but the Romans 
resisted heroically. " Another such victory," said 
Pyrrhus, "and I am undone." Affairs in Sicily 
demanded the presence of the king, and on his 
return he found the Roman position greatly 
strengthened. In the battle of Beneventum (275 
B. C.) he was utterly defeated. Pyrrhus then left 
Magna Grecia at the mercy of Rome. Tarentum 
surrendered (272 B. C), and the Samnites and 
other tribes who had broken their treaties were 
severely punished. By the year 264 B. C. all 
Italy, from the Rubicon to the Straits of Messina 
and the Ionian Sea, was subject to Rome. 

In this united Italy the citizens of Rome were 
the governing body. Outside of Rome there were 
three general classes of communities — the col- 
onies, whose citizens were still full citizens of 
Rome; the municipalities (munieipia), whose cit- 
izens, like the early plebeians, bore the burdens of 
Roman citizenship, the taxes and liability to mil- 
itary service, but could neither vote at Rome nor 
hold a Roman office ; and the allies, or socii, who 
were bound to Rome by treaties upon various 
terms of dependence. 

The first period of the Roman Republic began 
with the expulsion of the kings, 509 B. C, and 
ended with the unification of Italy, 264 B. C. The 
6 



82 



Outline Histoey of Romje, 



political character of the people was now formed, 
their military organization improved, and their 
triumph over Pyrrhus and the Greeks encouraged 
them in the contest about to open with Carthage 
for the supremacy of the Mediterranean Sea, 




The Roman Republic. — II. 83 



CHAPTER IV. 

SECOND PERIOD (Continued). 

The Roman Republic. 

Part II. (264-133 B. C.) 

THE PUNIC WARS AND FOREIGN CONQUESTS. 

At the beginning of the second period of the 
republic Rome was confronted by her first foreign 
rival, Carthage. Tyre and Sidon, the famous 
coast cities of Canaan or Phenicia, planted their 
trading colonies at many points on the Mediter- 
ranean before 1000 B. C. There are distinct traces 
of Phenician influence in Greece, and the Bible 
testifies to the boldness of their commercial enter- 
prises. Among the Phenician — in Roman language 
"Punic" — settlements in the western seas Carth- 
age easily gained and held the first rank. The 
situation, near that of the modern city of Tunis, 
was most advantageous for a center of trade, and 
the Tyrians who settled there made the most of 
their opportunity. Carthage became the head of 
a North African empire ; her fleets ruled the 
Western Mediterranean and visited Britain, and 
her own trading colonies abounded in Sicily, Sar- 
dinia, and Spain, as well as along the African 



84 Outline History of Rome. 

coast. The city demanded tribute from every de- 
pendency and filled the ranks of her armies with 
mercenary troops. Only the generals were 
Carthaginians, and the patriotism which animated 
the Roman common soldier was unknown among 
the Libyans and Numidians who fought in the pay 
of the African city. Carthage was governed by 
an oligarchy of wealthy merchants. There was no 
prosperous middle class of citizens, the whole State 
being made up of capitalists, of landless freemen, 
and of slaves, myriads of whom cultivated the 
plantations and handled the goods of the merchant 
princes. 

A comparison between Rome and Carthage at 
the outbreak of the war is favorable to the former. 
Rome was far poorer in money and material re- 
sources, and far less civilized, but she had the sup- 
port of united Italy, whose people were related to 
each other and bound to herself by the expectation 
of some share in the glory and profits of her great- 
ness. Carthage had enormous wealth and was in- 
vincible on the sea ; but her land army was com- 
posed of hired or impressed subjects, not of free- 
men, and her dependencies hated her as a monop- 
olist of trade and a greedy collector of tribute. 

The duel between Rome and Carthage began in 
Sicily, and in this wise : A band of ruffians from 
Magna Grecia, calling themselves " Sons of Mars " 
seized the citadel of Messana, in Sicily, and held it 
against the assaults of Hiero II., king of the Greek 
city Syracuse, who sought to dislodge them. In 






The Roman Republic. — II. 



85 



their extremity they asked aid of the Romans, who 
had as yet no foothold in the islands, and of the 
Carthaginians, who had more than a score of 
colonies there. The Roman Senate hesitated to 
send an army out of Italy, and Carthage, by 
prompt action, got possession of the town before 
the consul's army crossed the straits. But the 




Romans drove out the Carthaginian garrison and 
occupied Messana for themselves. Carthage there- 
upon declared war (264 B. C). Rome had the 
advantage during the first eight years of the con- 
test. Hiero attached himself to her, and their 
united forces made short work of the interior 
towns. Agrigentum, also, was taken after a long 
siege; but there the Roman conquests were stayed. 



86 Outline History of Rome. 

The strong coast fortresses were safe from her land 
attacks, and Rome had no navy worthy of the 
name. The Senate resolved to supply the defi- 
ciency; indeed, a fleet was necessary not only for 
offensive purposes, but to protect the defenseless 
Italian harbors. A Carthaginian five-decker 
(quinquereme) , beached on the Latin coast, fur- 
nished a model, and in 260 B. C. the energy of the 
Romans equipped a fleet of one hundred and 
twenty large vessels of war. To offset their rude 
seamanship they crowded their galleys with fight- 
ing men and provided grappling-irons and board- 
ing bridges by which their soldiers might come to 
close combat with the Carthaginian marines. The 

device worked admirably, 
and Caius Duilius won 
Rome's first naval battle with 
their aid, in this same year, 
260 B. C, at Mylae, near 
Messana. The fleet seized 
several towns on the shores 
of Sicily and Corsica ; but 
Panormus, Drepanum, and 
Lilybaeum resisted stoutly, 
and Hamilcar, the Carthag- 
caius D^iiius. inian general in Sicily, even 

won back some of the inland cities. In order to 
stop this desultory warfare the Roman Senate 
fitted out a fleet of three hundred and thirty ships 
for an attack upon Carthage itself. A Punic fleet 
of equal numbers was beaten at Ecnomus, and 




The Roman" Republic. — II. 



87 



(256 B. C.) the Romans landed a few miles from 
the great city. Overconfidenee induced them to 
send back a portion of the ships and soldiers, leav- 
ing the Consul Marcus Atiliius Regulus in com- 
mand. The city would have fallen had the consul 
been energetic ; but his terms of surrender were 
too exacting, and before he was ready to strike 
defenders were summoned. Hamilcar hastened 
from Sicily with his veterans, and Greek infantry 
and Nuniidian horsemen were hired in multitudes. 
Xanthippus came from Sparta to superintend the 
military operations. The Spartan cut the Roman 
legions to pieces with his cavalry and elephants, 
and took the consul captive (255 B. C.). The fleet 
which the Romans sent to bring off the remnant of 
the army was shattered in a storm. 

There is an interesting Roman 
story, of doubtful veracity, that 
Regulus. was sent to Rome with 
a Carthaginian embassy to treat 
for peace. It was supposed that 
the captive would use his influ- 
ence for a cessation of hostilities 
and his own release. But the 
proud and patriotic Roman 
begged his fellow senators to 
prosecute the war with all their might and so 
avenge the disgrace of his defeat. Then he went 
back to his prison in Carthage, and his captors 
avenged their disappointment by inflicting upon 
him a cruel death (250 B. C). 




Marcus Atiliius Reg- 
ains. 



88 Outline History of Rome. 

The African campaign was a failure, and Sicily 
again "became the scene of war. Panormus capit- 
ulated to Rome (254 B. C). Storms had again 
wrecked a Roman fleet (255 B. C.) and disgusted 
the Senate with naval warfare. On the land suc- 
cess was rare. In 251 B. C. the Consul Metellus 
defeated Hasdrubal near Panormus, but two years 
later the Carthaginians destroyed the remnant of 
the Roman sea force. Active operations now lan- 
guished ; but Hamilcar, surnamed Barca, " The 
Lightning," from his fierce and unexpected attacks, 
maintained himself in Sicily, harassing the con- 
suls and playing havoc with the allies of Rome 
and Syracuse. The Roman merchants, whose trade 
had declined in consequence of the exhausting 
war, raised a naval fund and presented it to the 
State. The Consul Lutatius Catulus was assigned 
to the command of the new fleet, which won the 
decisive battle of the iEgusan Islands (241 B. C). 
This closed the first Punic war. The treaty of 
peace awarded to Rome all the Carthaginian pos- 
sessions in Sicily and a war indemnity of $4,000,000 
to be paid within ten years. 

Neither Rome nor Carthage was idle in the 
twenty-three years which elapsed between the 
first and second Punic wars. Rome's first care 
was to strengthen her defenses. Italy proper was 
already bound to her. She now organized her 
Sicilian conquest into a province — the first of 
many foreign possessions. Sardinia, also, was 
won over from Carthage, and combined with 



The Roman Republic. — II. 89 

Corsica to form a second province. Affairs in the 
west being satisfactorily composed, the Senate — 
now a body of great wisdom and executive force 
— turned its attention to the east and north. The 
Illyrian pirates, whose haunts were among the 
inlets and islets of the eastern border of the 
Adriatic, and who had troubled the commerce of 
Italy and preyed upon the coast cities of Greece, 
were thoroughly chastised between the years 
229 B. C. and 219 B. C. The Greek towns, re- 
lieved from their fears, admitted their Roman 
liberators to share their national games and relig- 
ious rites. It was a dangerous guest that they 
summoned to their feast. 

Another invasion by the restless Gauls from the 
Po valley aroused the Romans to the necessity of 
subjugating these turbulent northern neighbors. 
They were beaten 225 B. C. in the battle of 
Telamon, and driven back from Etruria into Cis- 
alpine Gaul. Here the Romans planted important 
colonies — Placentia, Cremona, Mutina — and ex- 
tended the Flaminian military road to this region. 
These measures were scarcely completed when the 
Carthaginians precipitated the second Punic war. 

After her first encounter with Rome Carthage 
had come under the influence of a great man. 
Hamilcar Barca, the dashing leader who had de- 
layed the Roman conquest of Sicily, was keen 
enough to see that there was an irrepressible 
conflict of interest between the two great cities. 
Carthage had lost Sicily, and he endeavored to 



90 



Outline History of Rome. 



build up in Spain another and richer province, to 
offset the loss, and to supply resources upon which 
to draw in time of necessity. The Carthaginians 
granted him an army and dictatorial power, and 
with these he crossed over to Spain (238 B. C). 
By his skill as a general and his ability as a 
statesman he established a rich and powerful 
Spanish State, dependent upon Carthage. When 

he fell in battle (228 
B. C.) his son-in-law, 
Hasdrubal, contin- 
ued the work. Rome 
took alarm and fixed 
the river Iberus 
(Ebro) as the east- 
ward limit of Carth- 
aginian conquest; 
but no aggressive 
action was taken un- 
til Hasdrubal was 
too strong to be put 
down. When an as- 
sassin's dagger ended his life (220 B. C), the com- 
mand of the Carthaginians in Spain fell into yet 
more efficient hands. When Hamilcar Barca left 
Carthage on his Spanish errand he called to the 
altar his eldest son, Hannibal, a boy of nine years, 
and made him swear a solemn oath to cherish un- 
dying hatred toward Rome. This boy served with 
his father and brother-in-law in the western cam- 
paigns, and won favor with the soldiers. He was 




Hannibal. 



The Roman Republic. — II. 91 

twenty-eight years old when Hasdrubal died, and 
the army hailed him as its leader. He perceived 
that the time for which his father had prepared 
was now at hand. The Spanish kingdom was 
firmly established, and its revenues not only paid 
the expense of government and conquest, but 
yielded a surplus to the treasury of the mother- 
city. The army which had accomplished this 
work was not the usual mercenary medley which 
fought for Carthage. Its men had been hardened 
by long campaigns, inspirited by repeated suc- 
cesses under Hamilcar and Hasdrubal ; they were 
well-paid and well-fed veterans, devoted to their 
leader and fired with his own enthusiasm. Han- 
nibal himself was the central figure of the war. 
He was one of the greatest commanders of history, 
and his talent far transcended that of a mere 
leader of troops. He was a statesman of foresight 
and energy, and until he died Rome trembled at 
his name. 

To break the peace Hannibal sacked Saguntum, 
a town under Roman protection, and disregarded 
the limits which Rome had fixed. The envoys of 
the Senate demanded the surrender of Hannibal ; 
Carthage refused, and war was declared 218 B. C. 

The second Punic war was not a succession of 
futile and desultory campaigns like the first, but 
was conducted by Hannibal upon a carefully elab- 
orated plan. He saw that the strength of Rome 
rested in her allies — that united Italy was his real 
foe. To deprive the city of its allies would be its 



92 Outline History of Rome. 

ruin. The Cisalpine Gauls were still in angry 
mood from their chastisement and from the erec- 
tion of the military colonies on their lands in the 
Po valley. There were men still living in Sam- 
nium and Etruria who could remember when their 
countries were free from the Roman voke, and 
who still regretted their lost liberty. The Greek 
towns of southern Italy were but slightly bound 
to the city which had conquered them only fifty 
years before. These considerations determined 
Hannibal's plan of attack. He would enter north- 
ern Italy with all speed, call the disaffected Gauls 
to his standard, and then march southward in the 
guise of a liberator, seducing Etruscans, Samnites 
and Greeks from their Roman allegiance. Having 
shorn Rome of her allies he would crush her 
legions with his veteran troops. We shall see how 
closely this design was followed and with what 
success. 

Having made provision for the defense of Spain 
and Africa, Hannibal set out in the spring of 218 
B. C. on his famous march. He chose the land 
route to Italy, his road crossing south-eastern 
Spain, the Pyrenees Mountains, and southern 
France. He had 90,000 infantry, 12,000 cavalry, 
and 37 elephants; but when he reached the river 
Rhone the force had been reduced by hardships 
and garrison detachments to 50,000 infantry and 
9,000 cavalry, the flower of an army which had 
been trained by twenty years of fighting. The 
sluggish Roman general, Publius Cornelius Scipio, 



The Roman Republic. — II. 93 

was out-maneuvered, and the Carthaginian army 
crossed the Rhone in safety and made its way to 
the Alps unmolested. It was September. The 
mountaineers were hostile and the autumn snows 
had begun ; but Hannibal pressed on over the Lit- 
tle St. Bernard pass, and with the loss of half his 
foot-soldiers and one third of his mounted men 
descended to the plains of the Po in Cisalpine 
Gaul. 

The Romans were taken by surprise. The two 
consular armies which had been sent, the one to 
Spain, the other to Africa, were recalled in all 
haste. The Gauls fulfilled Hannibal's expectations 
by crowding to his head-quarters and enlisting 
for the war. By the time the northern army under 
Publius Scipio was ready to face him his troops 
were rested and half Cisalpine Gaul was at his 
back. The two armies met (218 B. C.) in the bat- 
tle of Ticinus, to the discomfiture of the Romans; 
although the masterly retreat of the wounded 
Scipio across the Po checked Hannibal's progress. 
But the advantage was lost by the other consul, 
Sempronius, who was enticed into the battle of 
Trebia (218 B. C), which resulted in the defeat of 
the Romans and the complete submission of the 
Cisalpine Gauls. The fortified Roman colonies, 
however, did not yield, and Hannibal could not 
stop for sieges. Adhering to his plans he lingered 
in the north only to the end of winter, and then 
hastened over the Apennines to Etruria and Italy 
proper. His coming was heralded by the Italian 



94 Outline History of Rome. 

captives whom he had taken at Trebia and Ticinus 
and released with honors to scatter the news of his 
approach. He proclaimed himself the liberator of 
the Italian towns, and showed them great consid- 
eration. But his Roman captives were punished 
with cruel severity. Thus he sought to impress 
upon the people that his war was against Rome 
alone, and that the Italians would find security in 
alliance with him. 

The Carthaginians sickened in great numbers 
from the malaria of the Etruscan swamps, and 
Hannibal lost an eye from a disease contracted 
there. But the Romans, cursed with incompetent 
leaders, offered no opposition until these ills were 
over and the enemy reached firm ground again. 
Then the new consul, who had stayed in camp at 
Arretium Avhile the enemy were laboring down the 
other border of the peninsula, gave chase. The 
Romans came up with the Carthaginians in a defile 
near Lake Trasimenus and marched into a trap 
which Hannibal had laid. Fifteen thousand 
Romans fell and half as many were taken prison- 
ers in this disaster, which can hardly be called a 
battle. (217 B. C.) Rome stood aghast. All 
Etruria was lost; Hannibal might march to the 
Tiber unopposed; but there was no demand for 
peace. Quintus Fabius Maximus was appointed 
dictator and a new army of defense was levied. 

Some have wondered that Hannibal did not fol- 
low up his success at Lake Trasimenus with an at- 
tack on Rome. But his plan was wiser. The 



The Roman Republic. — II. 95 

cavalry which won his battles could not take a 
walled city, and his army was not prepared for a 
long siege in the heart of a hostile country. So he 
turned eastward to gather forage and plunder in 
Umbria and Picenum, and to drill and discipline 
the masses of raw Gallic volunteers who nocked 
to him. 

The dictator Fabius had learned a lesson from 
the three defeats of his predecessors. He had not 
the cavalry nor the skill to defeat the invader in 
battle; but he hoped to defeat his plans without 
fighting. Hannibal had been in Italy two years, 
but, excepting the Gauls, hardly a single ally of 
Rome had deserted what surely resembled a losing 
cause. The Roman political system and the colo- 
nial " patches of Rome " held the subject coun- 
tries to their fealty. Hannibal's schemes depended 
upon breaking this allegiance, and the longer he 
stayed in Italy without doing so the weaker his 
position became. So Fabius followed the invader 
instead of confronting him. The eager Roman 
mob denounced him as canctator ("delayer"), and 
clamored against him at the news of Hannibal's 
raids in the rich Campanian farm lands. His dic- 
tatorship expired without a decisive engagement, 
and two consuls, the hare-brained Varro and the 
cautious Paulus, were elected for the year 216 
B. C. The defect of the Roman consular system 
hastened the catastrophe. The two generals had 
equal authority, and it was accordingly agreed 
that each should be supreme on alternate days. 



98 Outline History of Rome. 

The army, with its alternating commanders, was 
posted in Apulia watching Hannibal. The im- 
petuous Varro, tired of "Fabian" tactics, gave 
battle in the open plain of Cannae, on the little 
river Aufidus. The level ground was perfectly 
adapted for the evolutions of the African horse. 
The legions fought with their usual stubborn en- 
ergy, but they were out-generaled, surrounded, 
and their lines broken. Seventy thousand Romans 
fell victims to Varro's headstrong folly. 

That the government of Rome withstood the 
shock of this disaster was prophetic of the out- 
come of the war. Capua now joined Hannibal. 
The Samnites and Lucanians broke their treaty 
pledges, and sent re-enforcements to the invader. 
But the great body of the Italians clung to Rome. 
Scarcely a colony wavered. Hannibal had struck 
his heaviest blow; he could not surpass the suc- 
cesses at Trebia, Trasimenus, and Cannse; yet the 
political unity of Italy was unbroken. At this 
period Rome deserved the confidence of her allies. 
There was no suggestion of defeat in the proud 
spirit of the Senate. Little time was wasted in 
lamentation for the dead, but every freeman of 
military age was impressed for the war, and even 
slaves were armed. Fabius, Gracchus, and Mar- 
cellus led the new levies and continued the war 
in Italy. In Spain the brothers Publius and Cneius 
Scipio engaged young Hasdrubal, and prevented 
him from aiding his brother, Hannibal. Carthage 
sent scanty re-enforcements. Philip, King of 



The Roman Republic. — II. 97 

Macedonia, promised much; Rome took care that 
he should perform little. Hieronymus of Syra- 
cuse lent but feeble co-operation. Hannibal's 
cause declined steadily after Cannae. The cohe- 
sion of the Roman State, the revived energy of 
Senate and citizens, delayed the consummation of 
his plans; and delay meant decay. In 215 B. C. 
he lost his first battle at Nola. The Romans kept 
Philip occupied by the indecisive first Macedonian 
war (215-206 B. C), and Marcellus punished 
Hieronymus of Sicily by the war which ended 
in the siege and capture of Syracuse (212 B. C). 
From 212 B. C. to 207 B. C. Hannibal re- 
mained comparatively inactive. He captured and 
lost individual cities, but made no real progress 
toward the realization of his project. In the 
year 210 B. G, Publius Cornelius Scipio, a son of 
the old consul, went to Spain to crush the Car- 
thaginians there. He was fortunate, but Hasdru- 
bal eluded him, 208 B. C, and hastened across the 
Alps with re-enforcements. The consuls of 207 
B. C. were Livius and Nero. The former was in 
the north of Italy with an army; the latter, in the 
south, was dogging Hannibal's track, and endeav- 
ing to prevent a junction of the two sons of Ham- 
ilcar Barca. By a forced march Nero joined Liv- 
ius on the Metaurus, defeated and destroyed the 
auxiliaries under Hasdrubal, and returned to his 
position in front of Hannibal before that general 
was aware of his brother's presence in Italy. The 
loss of the Spanish re-enforcements was disheart- 
7 



98 Outline History of Rome. 

ening; Hannibal retired to Bruttium and aban- 
doned aggressive operations. 

Rome now became the attacking party. The 
young Scipio returned from Spain in 206 B. C. He 
had utterly subdued the kingdom which Hannibal's 
father had established there. In 205 B. C. he was 
made consul, and prepared " to carry the war into 
Africa," as the best means of dislodging the en- 
emy from Italy. With the enthusiastic support 
of the Senate he assumed control of the military 
operations. One army covered the movements of 
Mago, Hamilcar's youngest son, who had landed 
in northern Italy; but the greater armament sailed 
for Carthage (204 B. C). The next year Han- 
nibal was recalled to Africa, but the resources of 
his city were already exhausted. Scipio defeated 
him at Zama (202 B. C.) and closed the war. 

Carthage bought peace dearly. She gave up all 
claim to her former dominions outside of Africa, 
transferred the tributary kingdom of Numidia to 
Massinissa, an ally of Rome, destroyed her war 
fleet, and bound herself to pay an annual tribute. 
The Romans greeted Scipio with extraordinary 
honors, and gave him the name "Africanus," in 
memory of his triumph. 

The close of the war left Rome with many 
things to do. Those Greek and Italian cities that 
had sided with Hannibal she disgraced and humil- 
iated by deprivation of lands and political rights. 
Pleasant Capua, the second city of Italy, was 
made desolate. The Cisalpine Gauls were re-sub- 



The Roman Republic. — II. 99 

jugated and fettered by means of roads and col- 
onies (200-191 B. C). In Spain there were con- 
stant wars, but the country was parceled into 
two Roman provinces under the government of 
praetors. 

The dethronement of Carthage made Rome the 
leading power in the Mediterranean, and her rela- 
tions with eastern nations soon involved her in 
wars which widely extended her conquests beyond 
the Adriatic. 

Many circumstances prepared the way for an 
easy conquest of the East. Civilization was at the 
flood in the countries at the eastern end of the 
Mediterranean, but power was at a low ebb. Mac- 
edonia, Greece, and Syria were the three most im- 
portant divisions. Their condition at the close of 
the war with Hannibal will explain their subse- 
quent history. Macedonia was a country of 
Europe skirting the northern shore of the iEgean 
Sea. Under two kings, Philip (339-336 B. C.) and 
Alexander the Great (336-323 B. C), it had risen 
from obscurity to the mastery of three quarters of 
the world. At Alexander's death the empire was 
divided among a number of his generals, some of 
whom were capable rulers, who built up the pros- 
perous kingdoms of the Ptolemies in Egypt, of the 
Seleucidae in Syria, of Pergamon and Bithynia in 
Asia Minor, and Macedonia, the old home territory. 
The three last-named were among the weaker na- 
tions, and Macedonia, especially, soon lost its 
leading place. Greece had been the first conquest 



100 Outline History of Rome. 

of Alexander's father, Philip, and had exhausted 
itself in efforts to regain its freedom. The cities 
of Greece bound themselves loosely together in 
two leagues, the iEtolian and the Achaean, with 
the object of expelling Macedonian garrisons from 
their citadels. But these leagues were engaged 
in almost continual disputes with each other, and, 
despite their patriotic aims, really contributed to 
the downfall of the nation by dividing and con- 
suming its strength. 

The kingdom of Syria was for a time the most 
powerful segment of Alexander's empire. It com- 
prised the eastern half of Asia Minor and the 
whole of Persia. At the close of the second 
Punic war its ruler, Antiochus the Great (224-187 
B. C), was in his prime. He had added many 
provinces to his dominions, had adorned his cap- 
ital, Antioch, with every magnificence, and had 
decked his court with all the lavish splendor which 
had formerly distinguished the royal households of 
Darius and Xerxes, the famous Persians. Like 
those conquerors, Antiochus assumed the title of 
" King of Kings," or " The Great King," and ex- 
acted slavish submission from his people. It was 
with declining Macedonia, distressed Greece, and 
luxurious Syria that Rome came in contact about 
the beginning of the second century before Christ. 

The statesmanship of Hannibal had prompted 
him to form a league of all the Mediterranean na- 
tions in opposition to Rome, and one of his most 
promising alliances had been with Philip V., King 



The Rom ax Republic. — II. 101 

of Macedon, whom the success at Cannae (216 
B. C.) won to the Carthaginian side. But the ex- 
ertions of Rome nullified his good intentions. The 
Senate sent a small force into Greece and involved 
the iEtolian league in war against Philip. This 
first Macedonian war (215-206 B. C), while not 
in itself decisive, served Rome's purpose, for it 
held one enemy in play and enabled the hard- 
pressed Senate to concentrate all its forces against 
Hannibal, its mortal foe. The close of this war 
did not affect the independent relations of the two 
nations. Philip w r as left free, but his use of his 
liberty soon involved him in a second war. He 
was a bold, restless spirit, endowed with much 
genius, but cursed with periods of weakness and 
inaction. Before the battle of Zama he re-opened 
his alliance with Carthage, and after the peace he 
attacked Greek cities which the Illyrian pirate- 
hunting expeditions had made friendly to Rome. 
On these grounds the Senate decided upon war 
(200 B. C). The two Grecian leagues joined the 
Romans and drove the Macedonians out of Cen- 
tral Greece. Philip made a stand in Thessaly, 
but was routed at Cynoscephalae (197 B. C.) by 
the Consul Titus Quintius Flamininus. The 
terms of peace included the practical disarmament 
of the Macedonians. Their treasury was emptied 
by a heavy war tribute, their land and naval forces 
were cut down to insignificance, and their foreign 
policy was placed under Roman direction. 

The part which the Greeks had taken in these 



102 Outline History of Rome. 

campaigns won the friendship of the Romans, and 
one of the first acts of the victorious Flamininus 
was to declare the independence of the Greek 
cities. This was done at the national festival of 
the Isthmian games (197 B. C.) amid great rejoic- 
ings, which were, perhaps, uncalled for ; for this 
" independence " really meant nothing more than 
relief from Macedonian supremacy and real de- 
pendence upon Rome. The cities were left to 
themselves ; the Achaean league was, perhaps, 
encouraged ; but the Romans took care that no 
foreign influence except their own should dom- 
inate the Greek cantons and that no united Greek 
nation should acquire a dangerous degree of 
power. 

After the disaster at Zama, Hannibal, whom the 
magnanimity of Scipio had spared, devoted himself 
to the rehabilitation of his country. He penetrated 
to the defects of its political system with the same 
incisive vision which had directed his campaigns 
and had struck at the weaknesses of his enemies. 
Although defeated he was a popular hero, and 
wielded a power in Carthage which Rome wisely 
feared. His opponents in the former city accused 
him before the Roman Senate, and that body was 
willing enough to stay his reforms and banish their 
author. Hannibal escaped with his life. The oath 
which his boyish lips had sworn in the presence of 
his glorious father and the solemn Phenician altars 
he had cherished religiously. His hatred of Rome 
was undying, and when his own city closed its 



The Roman Republic. — 11. 103 

gates against him and his efforts to re-organize her 
resources were thwarted, he clung to his single pur- 
pose, the destruction of Rome. The court of Anti- 
ochus the Great was his natural refuge (194 B. C.) 
He won the favor of the great king, who had not yet 
come in conflict with the conquering city of the 
West. Hannibal engaged the king in his projects 
of revenge. Together they planned an anti-Roman 
coalition of Greeks and Asiatics. Rome deemed 
the monarch's reception of Hannibal and his nego- 
tiations with the " independent " Greeks a sufficient 
ground for hostilities, and the so-called " War with 
Antiochus " began in 192 B. C. 

The war opened with a Syrian invasion of Greece 
(192 B. C); but the Greek cities, with Macedon 
and Pergamon, helped the Romans to scatter the 
king's army. In 190 B. C. Roman and Rhodian 
fleets defeated Hannibal's armada at the Euryme- 
don. The Roman forces in Asia Minor were com- 
manded by the Consul Lucius Scipio, assisted by 
his brother, the victor of Zama; they ended the 
war by the battle of Magnesia (190 B. C). Anti- 
ochus gave up his possessions in Europe and the 
western part of his Asiatic provinces, and paid a 
war indemnity. Hannibal escaped, but the hatred 
of Rome followed him to the Bithynian court, and 
in 183 B. C. he took his own great life by a draught 
of poison. Scipio, his conqueror, died at about the 
same time, an exile by choice from his native city, 
where his later years had been clouded by disap- 
pointment and by real or fancied neglect. 



104 Outline History of Rome. 

Macedonia was the next to adopt the plans of 
Hannibal for a combination against Rome. The 
new king, Perseus, restored to some extent the 
prosperity of his own realm, gained the fickle 
favor of the Greek cities, and conceived other alli- 
ances, which, however, were incomplete in 172 B.C., 
when Rome resolved upon war. For three years 
the incompetent consuls accomplished little or 
nothing; but in 168 B. C. Lucius JEmilius Paulus, 
a patrician of the best sort, brought his energy and 
ability to the conduct of the war. His legions 
shattered the Macedonian phalanx at Pydna (168 
B. C), and with that battle broke the power which, 
at the death of Alexander, a century and a half 
earlier, had overshadowed all the East. The inde- 
pendence of Greece, Macedon, and Illyria was taken 
away, and there was now no civilized court about 
the Mediterranean in Europe, Asia, or Africa where 
the authority of the Roman Senate was not recog- 
nized and obeyed. There were still semi-dependent 
kings in Asia Minor and Egypt, but they only 
awaited their doom. No monarch ventured to op- 
pose his will to that of the Roman Senate. 

Carthage was now a city of wealth and mercan- 
tile prosperity. Her days of empire w^ere ended, 
but nothing could close her markets or her harbors. 
Yet something of her old pride remained, and her 
citizens were galled by the encroachments of Mas- 
sinissa, whom Rome had established as king of 
jSumidia. Rome supported the Moor in his appro- 
priations of Carthaginian territory and refused 



The Roman Republic. — II. 105 

either to send out an army or to allow Carthage to 
protect herself. Without troops, without a fleet, 
without a leader, the desperate city took up arms 
against the king, and the Senate, , led by Marcus 
Porcius Cato, interpreted this as an act of war 
against Rome. This third Punic war began in 149 
B. C, with the Roman invasion of Africa. Car- 
thage yielded and was disarmed; but when the 
Romans ordered the citizens to pull down their 
walls and houses, and desert the old location for a 
new site ten miles inland, the Phenician spirit 
flamed out fiercely as it had done in the days of 
Regulus. The gates were closed against the 
Romans, weapons were contrived in haste, a fleet 
was built, and the defense maintained at terrible 
sacrifice. In 147 B. C. Publius Cornelius Scipio 
yEmilianus, the son of iEmilius Paulus and the 
adopted heir of the great Scipio, took charge of 
the besiegers. His lines cut, Carthage off from 
land communication and he choked the harbor 
mouth with a wall of stone. Pestilence and fam- 
ine weakened the defenders, and in the spring of 
146 B. C. the Romans scaled the ramparts. The 
citizens contested the possession of every house 
and street, but fire and sword overcame them after 
six days of bloody combat. The walls and build- 
ings were leveled and a curse was laid upon the 
ashes of the city. A part of its territory was 
annexed to Numidia, Rome's subject kingdom, 
and the remnant was made the province of 
Africa, with Utica as its capital. The name of 



106 Outline History of Rome. 

Carthage no longer existed on the maps of the 
world. 

While Rome was wreaking this terrible ven- 
geance upon Carthage the liberties of Greece and 
MacedoD were expiring. After the fourth Mace- 
donian war (148-146 B. C.) Macedonia became a 
province of Rome. The constant strife among 
the Greek States induced Rome to crush them into 
submission. Lucius Mummius defeated the Aehae- 
ans at Leucopetra (146 B. C), and in the same 
year obeyed the command of the Senate to destroy 
the city of Corinth, the metropolis of Grecian art, 
commerce, and civilization. 

The Celtic tribes of northern Spain did not take 
kindly to Roman dominion, and the Lusitanians, 
dwelling in the region now known as Portugal, 
made serious inroads on the Roman provinces. 
Viriathus, the Lusitanian leader, was one of the 
ablest warriors that Rome ever encountered. 
With no advantages, except familiarity with the 
country in which he fought, this leader of half- 
civilized hordes held out for ten years (148-139 
B. C.) against the best armies which could be sent 
to defeat him. The Roman governors w r ere power- 
less to crush him and had recourse to perfidy. 
In 139 B. C. they procured his assassination, much 
to their relief, and soon brought his followers to 
terms. The Celtiberians in northern Spain were 
basely treated by the provincial praetors, and retal- 
iated by a fierce war, in which they inflicted heavy 
losses before thev had to vield. 



The Roman Republic. — II. 107 

To this same period belongs the Numantine War. 
Numantia, a town among the Spanish mountains, 
held out for four years single-handed against the 
Roman generals. The armies which had subdued 
the world could do nothing against these free peo- 
ple. The incompetence and faithlessness of the 
generals prolonged the war beyond all endurance. 
In 134 B. C, Scipio iEmilianus, who had com- 
manded in the third Punic war, was sent to Spain. 
For many months the heroic Numan tines withstood 
even his energy and determination. At last, worn 
out by their exertions, weakened by famine and dis- 
ease, they set fire to their houses and died defiantly 
as the Romans broke into the town (133 B. C). 

These Spanish wars and the defense of Numantia 
are not to be ignored because of their small place 
in history ; they have a peculiar significance, and 
suggest important inquiries in regard to the con- 
dition of Rome at this time. The successful 
stands of Viriathus, of the Celtiberians, and of 
Numantia, are surprising, coming, as they do, at 
the time when Rome had shown herself incom- 
parable in arms. The power which withstood the 
assaults of Hannibal was baffled by a tribe of 
savage mountaineers ! Carthage and Corinth, the 
" London " and the " Paris " of that age, were de^ 
stroyed, but Rome met her match ten years later 
at Numantia ! It is true that a change had taken 
place at Rome. A transformation, outwardly for 
the better, but demoralizing within, was passing 
over the Commonwealth. It be^an at the close of 



108 Outline History of Rome. 

the second Punic war. The tribute money ex- 
acted from Carthage and from the subject king- 
doms of the East was the original agent of the 
corruption. The provinces which the Senate 
erected from time to time out of its conquests 
were ruled by Roman praetors, later by pro- 
consuls, who took advantage of their brief terms 
of office to plunder their territories. The taxes of 
the provinces were farmed by Roman speculators, 
who paid the State a round sum for the right to 
collect the taxes and then extorted from the poor 
provincials money enough to yield an enormous 
profit. These tax-farmers were usually men of the 
"equestrian order" (eqicites), and their subordi- 
nates in the provinces were the hated " publicans." 
From the conquests in Greece and Asia the Ro- 
mans gained new ideas of luxury which sorted ill 
with their ancient simplicity. The art treasures 
of Athens and Corinth were shipped to Rome to 
adorn the city. The theater of Greece was copied 
and the corrupt comedies were adapted to the 
coarse language and ideas of Rome. The Greek 
language, already the language of Roman books, 
became the language of polite society. The sons 
of rich men went to Athens to perfect their edu- 
cation, and Greek teachers established themselves 
in Rome. The Romans began to spend more 
money on their homes, on personal adornment, 
and especially on their pleasures. It was an un- 
doubted fact that the ancient strength of charac- 
ter which had been the pride of the race was 



The Roman Republic. — II. 109 

relaxing under the strain of foreign influence and 
increasing wealth. 

Still another germ of disease in the State was 
slavery. This had existed from the most remote 
ages; but with the extension of foreign conquest 
it increased beyond all former limits. Slaves by 
the hundred thousand were imported from Greece 
and Asia, and every form of domestic and agri- 
cultural labor was wrested from freemen and im- 
posed upon slaves. The cruelty of the Roman 
had not declined with the decay of his firmness^ 
and the lot of the plantation-hand consequently 
had few ameliorations. It was a short life of utter 
misery. This slave-system was a two-edged sword 
cutting into the life of the republic: it maintained 
a population of several millions of men who were 
ready to seize the slightest opportunity to break 
away from their masters and begin the most ter- 
rible of insurrections, and it destroyed the dignity 
of free labor. The free agriculturists would not 
work with the chain-gangs, and the result was 
that the landless class in Italy, deprived of the 
means of support, flocked to the capital, forming 
a populace or rabble with which the government 
had to reckon at every turn. 

Until this period of our history our information 
concerning Roman men of note has been so con- 
fused and so intermingled with fictitious tales that 
it has scarcely been worth the repetition. But 
from the era of the Punic wars until the last 
days of Rome there is a generally trustworthy 



110 



Outline History of Rome. 




record, increasing in copiousness with every decade 
and abounding in the names and exploits of indi- 
vidual Romans. 

Marcus Porcius Cato and 
the two Scipios are the im- 
pressive figures in the epoch 
which we have just consid- 
ered. 

Cato, who is not to be mis- 
taken for Cato "the younger" 
of a century later, was a type 
of the ancient Roman. He- 
was born in 234 B. C, and 
lived a large part of his life 
Marcus Porcius cato. ; n the country, where he 
owned and tilled a farm. From the rural as- 
semblies and from service in the army he turned 
to Rome and engaged in politics as a reformer. 
His popularity, especially with the farmers, who 
flocked to the elections when he was a candidate, 
gained for him the highest offices in the city and 
important military commands. 

Cato opposed himself to the flood of new ideas 
which swept in upon Italy after communication 
was opened with Greece. He revered the old 
Roman gods and respected the ancient Roman 
ideals of manliness, simplicity, and frugality. As 
censor his power was exerted to counteract extrav- 
agance and atheism and to strengthen the consti- 
tution on the old basis. As a statesman he saw 
the evils of the new regime, and sought to cure 



The Roman Republic. — II. 



Ill 



them by restoring the old. He had not the con- 
structive ability to remodel the constitution to suit 
the altered needs of the State, and could only in- 
sist upon reviving its outgrown principles and 
combating what was firmly established. 

Publius Cornelius Scipio 
was a man of other man- 
ners. His family, the Cor- 
nelii, were patricians of 
ancient lineage and bound- 
less pride. The dark days 
of the war with Hannibal 
found the young Scipio dis- 
tinguished among the city 
youth for his beauty, elo- 
quence, and heroic conduct 
in his father's army. The 
dearth of great commanders 
at Rome, the failure of Han- 
nibal's plan of conquest, and 
the final resolve of Rome to end the war at any 
cost were his opportunity. By no means the equal 
of his opponent in genius, he defeated him at 
Zama and gained almost divine honors at Rome. 
After the wars in Africa and Asia, Scipio Africa- 
nus lived on a scale of luxury which called forth 
the condemnation of the stern old Cato and led to 
Scipio's withdrawal from Rome. He died in his 
voluntary exile about 185 R. C. 

Scipio iEmilianus, the son of the brave ^Emilius 
Paulus and the adopted heir of the great Scipio, 




Publius Cornelius Scipio Afri- 
can us. 



112 



Outline History of Rome. 



was a worthy member of both families. As a 
soldier he won the title of " Af ricanus Minor " by 
the capture and destruction of Carthage, and of 
" jSTumanticus " by the reduction of the Spanish 
town. Into both these campaigns he entered with 
the old Roman energy, after his weakling prede- 
decessors had frittered away years and legions. 
His tastes were cultivated, and in Rome he sought 
out Greek teachers and studied the works of the 
Grecian sages. ^Emilianus tried to stay the mis- 
fortunes which threatened the State ; but his 
talents as a statesman were exceeded by his good 
intentions, and bore but little fruit. 

The outline of the second period of the republic 
has included nearly every country on the shore of 
the Mediterranean. The single Italian city which 
first achieved the supremacy of the peninsula has 
now become mistress of the world. In a third 
chapter we shall consider how the Roman system 
of government endured the enormous strain of this 
responsibility. 




The Roman Republic.-— III. 113 



CHAPTER V. 

SECOND PERIOD (Continued). 

The Roman Republic. 

Part III. (133-31 B. C.) 

THE CIVIL WARS AND THE FALL OF THE REPUBLIC. 

With the third and concluding period of the 
republic the history of Rome assumes a new 
phase. This period is the shortest, but it is 
crowded with memorable events; and remarkable 
men — among them two, at least, of the world's 
greatest — jostle each other on the crowded stage. 

In considering the results of the extension of 
Roman dominion we were reminded of the evil 
influences which had thus been introduced into 
the once sober city. In the present division we 
must note the working out of these vicious prin- 
ciples in their many forms. We shall see their 
effect upon society and upon government both at 
home and in Rome's relations with foreign States; 
we shall examine the numerous attempts at reform 
and their successive failures, and we shall see h,ow 
Julius Caesar seized the crumbling constitution, 
arrested its fall, and, by instituting a strong cen- 
tral government under an absolute monarch, pre- 
8 



114 Outline History of Rome. 

served for half a thousand years the vast empire 
which it had taken the republic half a thousand 
years to win. 

War and conquest fill nearly every page of the 
record of Rome for the one hundred and fifty 
years between the passage of the Hortensian law 
and the outbreak of the land, or agrarian troubles, 
in the times of the Gracchi, 133 B. C. That 
famous law had opened every avenue of political 
distinction to the plebeians, and broken down the 
old social wall of patrician privilege. This led 
to a change in the office-holding class in the city. 
About the year 180 B. C. it was enacted that no 
man should hold one of the high (curule) magis- 
tracies who had not served ten years in the army. 
A minimum age was also fixed as a qualification 
for these positions. For aedile this was thirty-seven 
years, for praetor forty, for consul forty-three. 
It became customary also for the sedile to relieve 
the State of the burden of the expense of the 
national games and to bear it himself. This cus- 
tom practically excluded poor men from the first 
step toward the consulship. Where it failed to 
exclude them it often did worse. Their political 
ambition led them to borrow the enormous sums 
which the aedile's display rendered necessary. This 
plunged the office-seeker into debt, out of which 
there was but one escape. The praetors and the 
consuls, at the expiration of their year of office, 
were assigned to the government of the provinces 
which were the spoils of foreign conquest. In 



The Roman Republic. — III. 115 

the plunder of his province the debt-laden magis- 
trate sought relief. The corruption of the pro- 
vincial courts was incredible. The courts were 
controlled by the Roman governor, and too often 
his judgment was for sale to the highest bidder. 
Courts were established in Rome for the pur- 
pose of trying the persons accused of bribery and 
corruption, so extensive did these practices be- 
come; but the evil outstripped all the devices 
which were contrived to check it. 

The Senate was largely recruited from the ex- 
consuls and ex-praators, and thus became the repos- 
itory of wealthy office-seekers and of needy and 
ambitious adventurers. The Assembly of the 
Centuries (Comitia Centuriata) which elected all 
high officers, had also suffered a change by which 
the first classes (see page 64) lost their right of 
influencing the election by casting the first vote. 
Men who owned no land were also enrolled among 
the centuries, so that this assembly became a dem- 
ocratic body in which wealth and family conveyed 
no special privilege. 

The restrictions upon office-holding, together 
with the system of slave-labor and the changes in 
the comitia, caused a re-division of Roman so- 
ciety. There was the office-holding aristocracy, 
enormously wealthy or abysmally insolvent, and 
bent upon compelling a fortune out of the State. 
These men, mostly senators, gained the name of 
optimates, and they formed a body very difficult 
of access. A man who pushed his way to the 



116 Outline History of Rome. 

Senate by sheer force of talent as a general or 
orator was called a ?iovus homo (new-man, fresh- 
man), and slighted and snubbed by his proud col- 
leagues. The class of small farmers, who are the 
strength of any nation by reason of their intelli- 
gence, frugality, and conservatism, had disap- 
peared from Roman society. The corn-kings and 
cattle-kings of the peninsula, with their boundless 
cattle-ranges and sheep-pastures, had crowded 
them to the wall. The slave system, importing its 
human victims by thousands and working them to 
an early death, destroyed the competition of free 
labor and left the Italian freeman no resource. 
Such as possessed the cherished rights of Roman 
citizenship sought the city, and, becoming tainted 
with the miasma of corruption which infected the 
official classes, made their citizenship yield them 
support. The offices of state were for sale to the 
man who should bid highest for the favor of the 
populace. The second class in the decaying 
republic were these people {jyojjulares) , who 
exercised a political power which their character 
rendered dangerous. Demagogues instigated them 
against the optimates, and hurried them into 
projects of socialism and anarchy. Rich men 
courted their favor by open bribes, or by the more 
subtle method of distributing free bread and cele- 
brating free f estivals of costly grandeur. Between 
the populares and the optimates — the popular 
party and the senatorial party, as we shall here- 
after call them — was a third party, or rather fac- 



The Roman Republic. — III. 117 

tion, whose weight was thrown on one side or the 
other of the scale, as its selfish interests dictated. 
This was the equestrian order (the equites, or 
knights of the Servian constitution). These men 
were capitalists from whom the senatorial party 
drew its recruits ; but the knights were not the 
social equals of the senators, and were made to 
feel their inferiority in a way which frequently 
drove them into popular alliance against the aris- 
tocracy. Besides these factions within the city there 
were thousands of men in Italy who had fought 
in the Roman wars and believed themselves worthy 
of citizenship. These Italians had a just claim to 
a share in the government, and Rome was forced 
to recognize it after a bitter war. 

At the outset of the third period of the repub- 
lic we have these elements of danger : A venal 
Senate, a distressed and discordant citizen-body, and 
a non-citizen population clamoring for recognition. 

Two brothers, Tiberius Gracchus and Caius 
Gracchus, brought the civil strife to a head, and 
forfeited their lives by their efforts for reform. 
Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, the elder brother, 
was but a young man when he entered public life. 
His ancestry was eminent. Cornelia, his mother, 
was the daughter of Publius Scipio, the conqueror 
of Hannibal, and her two boys, Tiberius and 
Caius, were the "jewels" which she had displayed 
to the boasting wife of a Roman millionaire. 
Scipio iEmilianus, his cousin and brother-in-law, 
was the leader of the aristocrats ; Appius Claudius, 



118 Outline History of Rome. 

his father-in-law, was a patrician of the best type; 
but Tiberius, young, cultured, brave, and beloved, 
cast his lot with the poor. 

The tribunes of the people were established in 
the first days of the republic to guard the infant 
rights of the plebeians. With the equalization of 
the orders the reason of their existence vanished, 
but the office remained and tribunes were chosen 
every year by the plebeian tribes. These officers 
found a new field for action in the era of party 
strife. They no longer served the interests of one 
class, but utilized their high prerogatives as their 
principles prompted or their interests paid. Thus 
we shall see the tribunate divided against itself, 
some serving the Senate, others obeying the popu- 
lace. The tribune's power of veto and his influ- 
ence in the assemblies made him the approved 
instrument of political agitation, as we shall see. 

Tiberius Gracchus was elected tribune of the 
people at Rome for the year 133 B. C. and imme- 
diately proposed his measures of reform. The 
young tribune — he was scarcely thirty — was versed 
in law and history, and he knew that when, in 
former times, Rome had been subject to similar 
evils the tribune Licinius had passed a law which 
had somewhat abated the misery. Rome was 
overcrowded with idle citizens and Italy was in 
the hands of a few landlords. The relief lay in 
the re-division of the soil among the citizens. 
That was the legislation of Licinius. This is 
the Sempronian law of Gracchus : That all pub- 



The Roman Republic— III. 119 

lie lands privately occupied should revert to the 
State; that a commission of three men should de- 
termine all questions of dispute concerning pro- 
prietorship and should allow each occupier to re- 
tain from 500 to 1,000 jugera (300 to 600 acres), 
and should distribute the rest of the recovered 
public domain among the citizens and the Italian 
allies, awarding homestead farms of eighteen 
acres each to worthy applicants. Such was Grac- 
chus's great proposal. It was wise and just, but 
the way to its enactment was very hard, and its 
enforcement was harder still. The Senate, packed 
with landed nobles, refused to entertain the propo- 
sition, and secured the aid of a tribune, Marcus 
Octavius, to annul the acts of Tiberius. The 
latter destroyed the power of the former's veto by 
persuading the people to depose Octavius from 
the tribunate. Such a thing had never been done 
before, but the people obeyed their young cham- 
pion and set aside the agent of the landlords. 
The Sempronian law was passed, and its author, 
with his father-in-law, Claudius, and his brother, 
Caius Gracchus, were named as commissioners to 
enforce it. They encountered violent opposition 
from the land-holders, and Tiberius, whose year 
of office was expiring, feared the consequences in 
case he should lose the protection of his official 
title. He seems to have been led astray by the 
dangers of his position, and to have made high 
bids for popularity and re-election. The king of 
Pergamon, in Asia, had lately bequeathed his king- 



120 Outline History of Rome, 

dom to Rome. The senators meant to administer 
the estate to their own advantage, but Gracchus 
asked the populace to vote the treasure for stock- 
ing the farms of the new proprietors. Then he 
asked their votes for a second term. The parti- 
sans of the Senate postponed the election and 
raised the cry that Gracchus would be king. The 
consul refused to suppress him, and a band of 
young Roman lords rushed from the Senate-house, 
struck down the tribune with their bludgeons, and 
killed three hundred of his followers. (133 B. C.) 
Here was the muttered thunder of an approaching 
storm. Tiberius Gracchus fell the first martyr to 
the contest of the classes. His cousin, Scipio 
iEmilianus, followed him a few years later (129 
B. C), and his brother, Caius, ended a good fight 
in the same tragic fashion in the year 121 B. C. 

The vacancv in the land commission .was filled 
and the work of allotment went on for several 
years as Tiberius had planned. The measure cer- 
tainly afforded relief; but in 129 B. C. a dispute 
with the Latin proprietors, on the ground of in- 
fringement of title, brought the work to a close. 
In that year Scipio JEmilianus, the hero of the 
destruction of Carthage, was assassinated. He 
was the leader of the senatorial party and a wise 
and prudent statesman. Who murdered him was 
never discovered, but his opposition to the Grac- 
ehan reforms had been bitter, and he was doubtless 
removed for a political purpose. 

The Senate tried to stop the progress of reform 



The Roman Republic. — III. 121 

by dispersing the reformers. The energetic pair, 
Caius Gracchus and Fulvius Flaccus, were sent 
out of the country, the former as quaestor in 
Sardinia, the latter as proconsul in that part of 
Gaul which is now known as southeastern France. 
The work of subjugation which Flaccus began 
was carried out a few years later, and the Spanish 
possessions were connected with Cisalpine Gaul 
by a new Roman province, Gallia Narbonensis, 
founded in 118 B. C. 

In 123 B. C. Cains Gracchus left his province 
to take up his brother's work at Rome. He was 
a man of far greater genius than the martyred 
Tiberius, and his reforms looked beyond the relief 
of the poorer citizens to a genuine revision and 
reform of the political condition of the city. He 
was elected tribune of the people for 123 B. C, 
and re-elected for the succeeding year. The legis- 
lation of this brief period is a monument to his 
tremendous energy, resembling Caesar's. Gracchus, 
like his brother, went to the people for his author- 
ity, and disregarded the Senate until he should ac- 
cumulate sufficient power to break down that 
dignified assembly. He first won the friendship 
of the city rabble by a law providing that grain 
should be furnished to them by the State at a 
nominal price. This politic but unsound enact- 
ment allured thousands of indigent citizens to 
Rome, eager for bread and ready to support the 
leader who provided it without work. Having 
cemented his popularity with the masses by these 



122 Outline History of Rome. 

largesses of grain, by re-asserting the Sempronian 
land-law, and by founding colonies in Italy and 
abroad, the reformer attacked the aristocracy. 
First he divided it, separating the land-holding 
senators from the capitalist knights (equites) by 
granting certain valuable privileges to the latter. 
Thus the knights were given the collection of the 
revenues of Asia and the jury duties and conse- 
quent fees at Rome. What the equestrian order 
gained the Senate lost; and the law-making power 
which the comitia was now exercising at the beck 
and nod of the tribune threatened that the Senate 
would be left behind in the development of the 
new constitution, as the Comitia of the Curies had 
been stranded long since. 

But Gracchus overestimated his hold upon the 
populace. The Senate was aroused to protect its 
existence, and the tribune's proposal to extend full 
Roman citizenship to the Latins repelled the Ro- 
mans themselves, more jealous than ever of their 
misused rights. The Senate put up a tribune, M. 
Livius Drusus, who promised the populace more 
favors than Gracchus had offered, and the fickle 
citizens deserted their old love for the new. In 
the elections for 121 B C. the popular tribune was 
defeated. His friends rallied to his defense on 
the Aventine Hill, but the optimates broke down 
their barricades. Caius, with a single slave, suc- 
ceeded in crossing the Tiber, and in a grove on its 
farther shore their pursuers found the dead bodies 
of both. With the death of the Gracchi ended 



The Roman Republic. — III. 123 

a sincere effort for reform. The Senate saved it- 
self at the expense of two patriotic lives and 
much bloodshed. How well it deserved to live 
and govern was shown by the events of the next 
twenty years. 

The war with Jugurtha (111-105 B. C.) is an 
index of the sad condition into which the Roman 
government had sunk. The following is the his- 
tory of this wretched transaction: 

By the terms of the second settlement with 
Carthage, Rome assigned the rich African king- 
dom of Numidia to Massinissa, her ally in the sec- 
ond Punic war. His son, dying, left the kingdom 
in common to his own two sons and his nephew, 
Jugurtha, a brilliant young Moor who had served 
in the Roman army at Numantia, and knew the 
frail stuff which composed the nobility of the city 
that ruled the world. Confident of his ability to 
shield himself Jugurtha killed one of his royal 
cousins and laid siege to the other, who straight- 
way appealed to Rome for the protection which 
the Senate owed. A senatorial commission came 
to investigate, took Jugurtha's bribes, and gently 
urged him to spare his cousin. The disrespectful 
monarch sacked the town and slew Rome's royal 
ward with cruel tortures. More than that, he slew 
Roman citizens, and the tribune Memmius, in the 
citizen assembly of Rome, called the Senate to 
account for its scandalous perfidy. The Senate 
declared war and sent a consular army to Africa, 
but the generous Jugurtha sent the commanding 



124 Outline History of Rome. 

consul home a millionaire without a battle. Again 
Memmius, the honest tribune, denounced the taker 
of bribes, and the sluggish Senate summoned the 
king to Rome for trial. But no one condemned. 
The unpurchasable Memmius alone accused. The 
other tribunes slunk away with heavy purses. Ju- 
gurtha was so confident of safety that he dared 
to let loose his assassins upon a rival prince then 
resident at Rome. This heinous murder was too 
much. The Senate granted the popular demand 
for war, and the king returned to Africa pronounc- 
ing the famous judgment upon Rome : " O venal 
city; thou, too, shalt perish when a purchaser shall 
appear ! " JV 

The second invasion of Africa failed as miser- 
ably as the first. Jugurtha routed the consular 
army, and sent it under the yoke of three spears 
(sub jut/urn), which was the acme of disgrace. 
The consul made a craven peace which the powers 
at Rome would not ratify. Metellus, the able but 
aged senator, who commanded the next expedition, 
had two men in his army of whom the world was 
to hear much — they were Caius Marius and Lucius 
Cornelius Sulla. The latter was a young and hith- 
erto reckless patrician of no reputation. The 
former was forty-eight years old and a plebeian. 
Marius was born on his father's little farm at 
Arpinum, in 157 B. C. Some call him a day labor- 
er's son. Out-door work hardened his constitution 
to bear the strains to which his later life subjected 
it. He joined the army, and served with credit 



The Roman Republic. — III. 125 

though without distinction. The popular party 
in the city made him tribune and afterward praetor. 
His faithfulness and his genuine interest in his 
soldiers and exertions in their behalf gained some 
recognition for him among military men, and 
doubtless led Metellus to select him as second in 
command. For two years the Romans accom- 
plished little, and Marius accordingly conceived 
the idea of applying for the consulship and the 
chief command. Metellus scouted the possibility 
of his election, and advised him not to humiliate 
himself by going to Rome as a candidate. Marius 
not only went, but won. As consul (107 B. C.) 
he displaced Metellus, re-organized the army, en- 
listed soldiers from the city rabble, and drilled 
them to a perfection of discipline. These legions 
followed their horny-handed general now as they 
had not followed the perfumed senatorial chiefs. 
The really weak Jugurtha was easily crushed now 
that a man of honesty and energy opposed him. 
The ability of Sulla as quaestor under Marius has- 
tened the end of the war (105 B. C). Jugurtha was 
taken and brought to Rome, where he died in prison. 
The military significance of the Jugurthine war 
was nothing, and the whole affair might be dis- 
missed with a line of comment were it not for the 
exhibition which it furnishes of the utter weak- 
ness of the Roman Commonwealth. The wretched 
business of the earlier campaigns showed that the 
highest offices in the State were filled with bribe- 
takers. The successful candidacy of Marius 



126 Outline History of Rome. 

showed that a popular general might ride to the 
highest place on the suffrage of the people. Two 
new characters, Marius and Sulla, have been intro- 
duced, and the praise which Sulla has won from 
the Roman aristocracy for his part in Jugurtha's 
capture has soured the temper of the jealous and 
vindictive democratic leader. 

During the African campaigns the Roman 
armies in Europe were marching from one disaster 
to another under the direction of incompetent 
leaders. Rome had no civilized enemy on the con- 
tinent, but her soldiers found more than their 
match in the half barbarous Germanic tribes which 
were in turbulent commotion north and east of the 
Alps, and from time to time sent hostile hordes 
over the mountain barrier into the Italian plains. 
In 113 B. C. the Cimbri defeated a consular army 
on the north-eastern frontier, but turned aside to 
Gaul (modern France) without pursuing their ad- 
vantage. In 109 B. C. and 107 B. C. the Roman 
commanders in Gaul met the Cimbri and were re- 
peatedly defeated. In 105 B. C. these same bar- 
barians destroyed two Roman armies on the lower 
Rhone. The citizens were panic-stricken. Their 
armies seemed useless, their generals incapable of 
victory. The Jugurthine war had just closed and 
the populace assigned the command against the 
Cimbri to their hero, Caius Marius. A sudden 
change in the movements of the barbarians granted 
an interval for preparation. In defiance of law 
and custom Marius was made consul five times in 



The Roman Republic. — III. 127 

succession (104-100 B. C). He made a few marked 
changes in military organization and tactics, in- 
spired his men with a share of his own confidence, 
led them into Transalpine Gaul, and there, in 102 
B. C, routed the Teutones in the renowned 
slaughter of Aquae Sextiae. The Cimbri had 
meanwhile swept around the Alps and entered the 
valley of the Po, chasing before them the army of 
Catulus, the patrician consul. Marius met them 
at Vercellae, broke their formation of battle, and, 
aided by Catulus, inflicted such a blow upon them 
that they abandoned forever their schemes of con- 
quest. 

The populace now had nothing too good for 
Marius. Their hero had become their idol. He 
was "the third Romulus," "the second Camillus." 
His very boorishness of manner, which disgusted 
the aristocrats, commended him to the democracy. 
He had another element of strength — the veteran 
army. The military reforms had altered the char- 
acter of this force. It was no longer a national 
guard of militiamen called from shop and plow 
for a season and returning to their work at the 
close of the campaign. The wide extent of the 
realm and the attitude of the frontier tribes com- 
pelled the State to support a standing army of 
regular soldiers — men whose only business was 
war. The victories of Marius bound these reg- 
ulars very closely to his fortunes. Henceforth the 
leader of an army was a source of dread. 

Marius, the soldier, was no statesman. He was 



128 



Outline History of Rome. 




mfti 




Caius Marius. 



too honest to engage with all his heart in the wilder 
schemes of Glaucia and Saturuinus, the leaders of 
the populace with whom he formed his first part- 
nership. These three men 
obtained the high offices for 
the year 100 B. C , and the 
tribune Saturninus revived 
the laws of Gracchus. New 
colonies were to be formed, 
and the public lands were 
to be assigned to the Ma- 
rian soldiers and the Italian 
allies. The promise of ra- 
tions at nominal rates se- 
cured the favor of the mob 
of city voters. But the demagogues overreached 
themselves. The turbulence of their followers 
frightened the capitalists of the equestrian order, 
whom the Gracchan jury-laws had attached to the 
popular party, and even Marius wavered in their 
support. Saturninus and Glaucia grasped at illegal 
power, and the Senate commanded Marius, as con- 
sul, to protect the State. He obeyed, and a bloody 
battle was fought in the forum, December 10, 100 
B. C. The senatorial party, led by the ex-chief 
of the people, triumphed, and the two popular 
leaders, together with many of their followers, 
were put to death. Marius was checked in his 
political career. The Senate had no further use 
for him, and the people hooted him in the streets. 
He left the city at the expiration of his sixth con- 



The Roman Republic. — III. 129 

sulship, hating both citizens and aristocrats, but 
cherishing the dark prophecy that he should once 
more rule at Rome. " Seven times consul," an old 
witch had said. 

Marcus Livius Drusus, " the Gracchus of the 
aristocracy," made a noble effort to cure the evils 
which preyed upon the State. He was a true aris- 
tocrat, and had the support of the best and ablest 
men of his order, but they were in a minority. 
His laws aimed to strengthen the Senate, to re- 
lieve the poorer citizens and the Italian allies. 
He proposed to transfer the jury-privilege from 
the knights to the senators, but to enroll three 
hundred new senators from the equestrian order. 
He would extend the distribution of grain, offer 
homesteads to the idle citizens, and finally raise 
the Italians to political equality with the Romans. 
The last proposition was the wisest of all, for 
Rome had already proved the incapacity of one 
city to rule an extended domain. Rut the jealous 
citizens charged Drusus with high treason. The 
dregs of the populace and the dregs of the Sen- 
ate turned against him. An assassin struck him 
down (91 B. C.) and the Senate canceled his 
legislation. 

Discontent with the failure of Drusus led the 
Italians to revolt. The Social war (war with the 
allies or socii) began in Picenum, in 90 B. C. 
The whole peninsula rose against Rome. Cor- 
finium, under the new name Italica, was made the 
rebel capital of an Italian State. But the bonds 
9 



130 Outline History of Rome. 

between the allies were loose and their organiza- 
tion poor. Rome pulled her forces together for 
the struggle. By the Varian law the partisans of 
Drusus were expelled from the Senate. A large 
army was raised, and both Marius and Sulla offered 
their services to the war department. Sulla was 
given the leadership of the southern army and 
Marius was assigned to the central division. To 
break up the confederacy the Julian law (90 B. C.) 
offered Roman citizenship to the Italians not yet in 
revolt, and the Plautia-Papirian law, a few months 
later, granted the same concession to all Italians 
who should apply for it within sixty days. By 
such seductions and by superior discipline the 
dangerous insurrection was crushed (88 B. C.) ; 
but it left a harvest of bitter fruits for the city. 
The Senate had lost its ablest men by the Varian 
law; the Italians were dissatisfied with the restric- 
tions which were placed upon their newly-acquired 
citizenship ; Marius, the democratic general, and 
Sulla, the aristocratic commander, were rivals and 
enemies. At the same time the Senate declared 
Avar against Mithridates, king of Pontus, who was 
plundering and murdering Roman citizens in Asia 
Minor. Sulla, with the army of the south, was 
ordered to Asia to conduct operations against him. 
To settle some of the harassing problems the 
tribune Publius Sulpicius devised several laws. 
The Senate was to be rehabilitated by the expul- 
sion of its bankrupt members and the restoration 
of the Varian exiles. The Italian citizens were to 



The Roman Republic. — III. 131 

have full political rights in the city. The Senate, 
led by Sulla, opposed the Sulpician reforms. 
Marius allied himself with the tribune, who per- 
suaded the populace to transfer the conduct of the 
Mithridatic war from the champion of the Senate 
to the old friend of the people, the conqueror of 
the Cimbri. Sulla, at Brundisium, appealed to his 
soldiers ; they clamored to be led against Rome. 
Marius and Sulpicius could not collect a sufficient 
army to hold the city, and for the first time Rome 
was taken by Romans. Sulla forcibly quelled 
opposition, greatly increased the authority of the 
Senate, and after a few months in the city hurried 
to Asia Minor to prosecute the war. 

Ever since the subjection of Antiochus the 
Great (189 B. C.) Asia Minor had been in a dis- 
turbed condition. Half a dozen discordant king- 
doms, more or less under Roman influence, preyed 
upon each other. The distance of Rome itself and 
the corruptibility of the commissions of senators 
which were sent out to protect Roman interests 
gradually brought Rome into contempt. Mithri- 
dates, king of Pontus, despised her authority as 
heartily as did Jugurtha of Africa. This Mithri- 
dates was a remarkable man, of unusual stature, 
of surpassing bodily accomplishments, and of a 
tremendous mental and physical energy. The 
hard struggle which he gave the Romans led 
them to believe the current stories of his almost 
superhuman strength. They did not doubt that 
he had so inured himself to poisons that he was 



132 Outline History of Rome. 

safe from the usual terrors which haunted Eastern 
sultans and was hardly able to take his own life. 
Mithridates extended the boundaries of his ances- 
tral kingdom, Pontus, on the Euxine or Black Sea, 
until they included the eastern and northern shores 
of that water. Having gathered w r ealth and power 
by these annexations he began a course of similar 
encroachments on the west upon territories in which 
Rome had an interest. Sulla, then governor of 
Cilicia, forced the king to respect the decrees of 
the Senate (92 B. C). During the Social war in 
Italy Mithridates repeated his aggressions so in- 
sultingly that war — the first Mithridatic war — was 
declared by Rome (89 B. C). But the city had 
scarcely troops enough to man her armies in Italy; 
her allies were in revolt, and for a year the Pontic 
king met no real opposition. He overran the 
adjoining kingdoms and the Roman province of 
Asia, proclaiming himself to Greeks and Asiatics 
as a liberator. All the Italians in the province — 
numbering at least 80,000 — were murdered, with- 
out distinction, at his cruel command in a sin- 
gle day. Only a few small districts in Asia re- 
mained faithful to Rome, and without waiting to 
reduce them the conquering army crossed the 
iEgean to liberate Greece. The poor Greek cities, 
constitutionally unable to stand alone, had already 
suffered " liberation " at the mercy of Macedon 
and Rome ; but they were ready for more, and 
Athens led the welcome to the invader. 

We have now reached the point where Sulla, 






The Roman Republic. — III. 133 

having composed the affairs of the city and prop- 
ped the Senate on its doubtful seat (see page 131), 
took the field against Mithridates. With 30,000 
men he crossed to Greece (87 B. C.) and drove the 
invaders out of Athens and the Pirseus. An over- 
whelming army under Archelaus opposed him at 
Chaeronaea in Boeotia, but was beaten in an action 
in which the aristocratic commander exhibited 
brilliant military genius. 

Meanwhile there had been a democratic over- 
turn at Rome, and the popular party had voted to 
depose Sulla, and sentFlaccus, one of its own men, 
to take his place. But it had become one thing to 
vote the deposition of a successful commander and 
quite another thing to compel him to give over his 
army. Sulla gave no heed to the mandate of the 
comitia ; had no dealings with Flaccus, and con- 
tinued his campaign against Mithridates, propos- 
ing to finish with the business in hand and then 
to settle in person with the unruly democrats at 
Rome. Flaccus left Greece and crossed over to 
Asia with the democratic army. Sulla inflicted a 
second defeat on the Asiatics at Orchomenus in 
85 B. C. and then led his devoted troops into Asia 
by the land route. The civil war at Rome deluded 
Mithridates into the belief that he could purchase 
peace with one party by offering his aid to crush 
the other. But Sulla was a hard man to hoodwink. 
He guarded his own interests well, but he did not 
neglect his duty. Mithridates signed a treaty with 
him in 84 B. C. whereby the king agreed to give 



134 Outline History of Rome. 

up all his conquests and prisoners, to dismiss most 
of his army and navy, and to pay the expenses of 
the war. The revolted province of Asia was 
mulcted of a heavy fine ($24,000,000), and the few 
faithful towns were richly rewarded. The army of 
Flaccus now mutinied and joined the Sullan vic- 
tors. The conqueror had finished the business in 
hand and now turned his hard face toward Rome. 
There was need of him in Italy. He had left an 
optimate, Octavius, and a democrat, L. Cornelius 
China, in the consulate at Rome. The latter was 
a firebrand. No sooner was Sulla in Greece than 
Cinna provoked a civil war (87 B. C.) by attempt- 
ing to restore the canceled Sulpician laws (see 
page 130) and to recall the popular leaders whom 
Sulla had banished. The senatorial party broke 
up the comitia by violence and killed many of the 
multitude. For the safety of the State the Senate 
outlawed the democratic consul, but Cinna lingered 
in Italy and all the malcontents gathered about 
him. Marius, bowed with years, but still awaiting 
his promised consulship, hastened from his African 
retreat. The many outlaws of the Sullan revolu- 
tion and the dissatisfied Italians helped to swell the 
democratic army. The rapid growth of the in- 
surgent force created a panic at Rome. It was 
difficult for the Senate to raise a force and im- 
possible to select a fit commander. Cinna cut off 
the sources of the grain supply and laid siege to 
the city. A pestilence within the walls helped his 
cause. Caius Marius, and Quintus Sertorius sup- 



The Roman Republic. — III. 135 

plied the military genius which Cinna lacked. 
Their presence foreshadowed the result of a siege, 
and men from the garrison nightly deserted to the 
Marian camp. Without awaiting an attack the 
Senate surrendered, trusting China's promises of 
mercy. Marius had promised nothing, and his will 
was stronger than China's, He had been cast out 
by the city which once had hailed him as its saviour, 
The aristocrats had used him as their tool and 
thrown him aside in contempt. Their dragoons 
had hunted him out of Italy and harried his rest 
even in foreign lands. He was now seventy years old^ 
ignorant as ever, still narrow in mind and changed 
only in the deepened intensity of his hate. At his 
command the soldiers disregarded the pledge of 
Cinna and slaughtered indiscriminately all the op- 
timates who could be found. The list of the dead 
includes some famous names, but no noble name 
could slake the thirsty vengeance of the maddened 
Marius. The prophecy which had nourished his 
hopes during his later years was now fulfilled — at 
his order — and on the 1st of January, 86 B. C, he 
entered on his seventh consulship. One of his first 
acts was to give office to his nephew, Julius Caesar, 
then sixteen years of age. Two weeks later he 
died in a raging delirium, furnishing in life and 
death an awful exhibition of the intensity of un- 
controlled revenue. 

The democratic leaders triumphed in the blood 
of the aristocracy; but there was a specter left to 
haunt their dreams. Sulla, the greatest of the sen- 



136 Outline History of Home, 

ators, was in Greece fighting for his country at the 
head of 30,000 devoted men. Flaceus, the suc- 
cessor of Marius, was sent to relieve him of his army 
and the conduct of the Mithridatic war (86 B. C). 
How he fared in Greece and Asia we have already 
seen. Sulla went on with his campaigns as if his 
commission from the Senate had not been revoked. 
He was now legally an outlaw : but an outlaw at 
the head of an army was a dangerous man to deal 
with. Still he was absent and fiorhtingr. There 
were the perils of war, of camp, and pestilence to 
take him off; perhaps he would never return. So, 
perhaps, Cinna reasoned for a time. It may be 
that he hugged the delusion the more closely as it 
showed sig^ns of vanishing altogether. Year after 
year he made himself consul and ruled Rome as if 
there were to be no reckoning. His power was 
practically absolute. He was what no one would 
dare whisper that he was — a Roman king. The 
weakened Senate and the fawning rabble passed 
his laws. The Italians were accepted as genuine 
citizens of Rome, and the city mob drew its daily 
dole of grain from the government stores. 

In 84 B. C. the outlaw Sulla wrote to the Senate. 
He had fulfilled his mission in Asia. Mithridates 
had acknowledged Roman supremacy and made 
amends for his misdemeanors, Sulla was now 
about to return, and he announced his intention of 
coming at the head of his army to restore the con- 
stitution as he had settled it in 88 B. C. At the 
news Cinna started to meet him with an armv, 



The Roman Republic. — III. 1ST 

but his soldiers mutinied and slew him (84 B. C). 
The leadership fell to Carbo, the younger Marius, 
and Sertorius. Norbanus and Lucius Scipio were 
consuls for 83 B. C, the year in which Sulla landed 
at Brundisium with forty thousand men. Many 
senators came to his camp ; one young knight, 
Cneius Pompeius (Pompey), led three legions of vol- 
unteers from Picenum and presented them to the 
delighted commander, who hailed him "Imperator." 
Sulla's aim was to gain possession of the capital 
and re-establish the rule of the Senate. He could 
not hope to reverse all the legislation of the de- 
mocracy without estranging the allies, and he ac- 
cordingly guaranteed to the Italians the fullest 
citizenship. The army of one consul he defeated, 
and that of the other deserted in a body to the 
Sullan camp (83 B. C). The next year the armies 
of the government w T ere more ably led, and the 
Samnites, always the hardiest of the allies, joined 
in the opposition to Sulla. But his generalship 
was unequaled among his opponents. His blows 
were sudden and heavy. With the odds against 
him he triumphed signally. The final battle was 
fought at the gates of Rome, in November, 82 
B. C. Young Marius commanded his slaves to 
kill him; Sertorius escaped to Spain. For the 
third time the Romans had taken Rome. 

Sulla's former capture of the city had been com- 
paratively bloodless. Marius and Cinna had red- 
dened the forum with aristocratic carnage in a 
vengeful frenzy, and Sulla's later acts eclipsed 



138 



Outlixe History of Rome. 




even the Marian massacres in horror. He was 
not a man to be swept by passion, like the other 
revolutionists ; revenge was not his inspiration, 
neither did he covet absolute 
power. Himself an aristocrat 
of the aristocrats, he believed 
that his order was the only 
one capable of governing the 
State. Of the common people 
he feared nothing if left to 
themselves. It was when led 
by the renegade nobles — the 
Gracchi, the Cinnas, and the 
like — that they were dangerous. 
Lucius Cornelius suiia. . jj e WO uld, therefore, extermi- 
nate the moderate party in the Senate, the agi- 
tators of the dull masses. This was the policy 
of the "Sullan proscriptions." Lists were drawn 
up of all the prominent men throughout Italy who 
had sided with China, sentences of exile or death 
were pronounced against the proscribed, and their 
property fell to the State and the informer. 
Nearly five thousand names of " evil-minded " 
citizens were listed, and most of them suffered 
the execution of the sentence. Their lands were 
distributed among the soldiers of Sulla's army 
and their slaves were made free citizens. 

Sulla did not care for personal power; all his 
measures were bent on giving the Senate monopo- 
listic control of the State. He doubled the number 
of its members, gave them the jury-powers which 



The Roman Republic. — III. 139 

the knights had lately possessed, and abolished 
the power of the censors to expel senators. The 
tribunes were disqualified from holding any higher 
office, and in general the popular assemblies were 
deprived of authority. They could not even meet, 
except at the call of the Senate, and the Senate's 
sanction w r as indispensable to the validity of every 
law. With their political rights the populace also 
lost the free-grain grants which Gracchus had in- 
augurated. Sulla held the position of dictator for 
two years — a genuine king in power — and as soon 
as his " Cornelian reforms " were established with- 
drew to private life. He died in 18 B. C, in the 
full tide of his prosperity and in the enjoyment 
of the pleasures and successes for which he gave 
himself the title of Felix, " the Fortunate." His 
death left the Senate in control of the State, but, 
unfortunately, without self-control. Burdened 
with the responsibility of absolute power it stag- 
gered along to its destruction without guide or 
leader. 

The task of preserving the Sullan constitution 
was difficult in itself — quite enough to occupy the 
attention of the Senate; but the problem was com- 
plicated by revolts abroad and insurrections at 
home. 

At Sulla's death the consul, Marcus Lepidus, a 
member of the popular party, made an effort to 
overthrow the recent reforms. But the other con- 
sul, Catulus, backed by the Senate, the survivors 
of Sulla's army, and the troops of Pompeius, 



140 Outline History of Rome. 

crushed this movement (78-77 B. C). The sol- 
diers of Lepidus who escaped made their way to 
Spain, where the democratic cause had a stout 
champion. 

Sertorius, an exile from Italy, founded an inde- 
pendent kingdom among the Lusitanian mountains 
in Spain, and for eight years (80-72 B. C.) success- 
fully resisted the senatorial armies, led by such 
men as Metellus and Pompeius. A jealous lieu- 
tenant murdered him (72 B. C), and was himself 
defeated and put to death by Pompeius. While 
Pompeius was in Spain a dangerous outbreak oc- 
curred in Italy. At Capua was a school where 
athletic slaves were trained for the sword-fights 
which were a popular feature of the public games. 
One of these gladiators, Spartacus, a Thracian, in- 
spired his fellows, mostly his countrymen and Gaul- 
ish prisoners of war, to kill their guards and escape. 
Their plan succeeded, and the liberated bandits in- 
fested the sleeping crater of Vesuvius and robbed 
all the country round. Other gladiators followed 
their bold example. Slaves crowded to them from 
the neighboring barracks. Spartacus defeated the 
bands which Rome sent against him and felt 
strong enough to fight his way out of Italy. But 
his subordinates were unruly, and the temptation 
of rich spoils kept them in the peninsula, which 
they ravaged, like Hannibal, unchastised for two 
years (73-72 B. C). In 71 B. C. the praetor, 
Marcus Crassus, scattered the slave army, and with 
the assistance of Pompeius, just returned from 



The Roman Republic. — III. 141 

Spain, put an end to this disgraceful Servile war. 
A pack of half -armed slaves had roamed through 
Italy for three years. Surely the reformed Senate 
was no more capable than in the days of Jugurtha! 

Pompeius and Crassus received the consulship 
as a reward for ridding the State of Sertorius and 
Spartacus. They signalized their year of office 
(70 B. C.) by forming an alliance with the popular 
party to cut away several of the newly-set props 
of the Senate. The tribunes were reinstated in 
their old privileges; the jury duties were divided 
between the senators and knights, and the power 
of removing senators for cause was restored to 
the censors. Thus the chief clauses in the Sullan 
constitution were canceled by two men who had 
fought in his army, but who now took sides with 
the common people. The grain largesses had al- 
ready been restored, so that the city rabble peace- 
ably regained nearly all that it had lost in the 
aristocratic revolution. 

It was the absence of strong government in 
Italy which allowed the Servile war to grow to 
dangerous proportions, and it was the same weak- 
ness abroad which allowed the pirate power to 
nourish in the Mediterranean and Mithri dates to 
re-commence his aggressions upon the provinces 
and allied kingdoms of Rome in Asia Minor. 

The second Mithridatic war (83-81 B. C.) made 
no change in the terms of peace as Sulla had 
arranged them in 84 B. C. ; but in 74 B. C. a 
third contest opened between the Senate and the 



142 Outline History of Rome. 

ambitious king. Tigranes, the son-in-law of Mith- 
ridates, was now King of Armenia and the most 
powerful ruler in Western Asia. He refused his 
aid to Mithridates, but Sertorius, in Spain, and the 
pirates who swarmed in all the seas lent valuable 
assistance. Lucius Lucullus led the Roman army 
in eight campaigns (74-6 7 B. C). He fought on 
sea and land, captured numerous fleets, and de- 
stroyed powerful armaments. In 73 B. C. Mith- 
ridates fled to the court of Tigranes, whither Lu- 
cullus followed him. The veterans won the famous 
battle of Tigranocerta, 69 B. C, and then crossed 
the Euphrates in pursuit of the kings. Here the 
army mutinied, and clamored to be led home 
(68 B. C). The people at Rome had authorized 
the discharge of the veterans, and there was no 
alternative for Lucullus but to abandon his advan- 
tage and leave the two kings unconquered. In 66 
B. C. Pompeius superseded him in the command. 

While Lucullus had been performing wonders 
among the deserts and mountains of Asia another 
set of generals had been marring their fortunes in 
the war with the pirates. These buccaneers had 
regular organized governments, with fortified har- 
bors and strong castles, and no part of the Med- 
iterranean was free from their depredations. Their 
fleets levied contributions from isolated towns, 
seized the Roman grain and treasure-ships, cap- 
tured travelers and held them for ransom. In 
Crete and Cilicia their strongholds were especially 
numerous. In 78 B. C. their audacity aroused the 



The Roman Republic. — III. 143 

wrath of the Roman Senate, and throughout the 
next ten years expeditions were sent against the 
pirates. Cilicia was wrested from them in 75 B. C. 
and Crete in 68 B. C. Although two of their nest- 
ing-places were broken up the foul brood was not 
destroyed. There was need of a more comprehen- 
sive plan and more energetic action. In 67 B. C. 
the Gabinian law clothed Pompeius with unlim- 
ited power over the waters of the Mediterranean 
and its coasts for fifty miles inland. Whatever 
he wanted of money, ships, or men, he had full 
warrant to take, and he was given three years for 
preparation and execution. It was a decree of the 
people, not a law of the Senate, which conferred 
this unprecedented royal authority. Pompeius 
acted rapidly, and within three months swept the 
pirate power from the seas. On the strength of 
this brilliant exploit the tribune Manilius proposed 
Pompeius as the man to take up the war against 
Mithridates, which had languished since Lucullus 
was recalled. The " Manilian law " was passed, 
and Pompeius thus added the full command of 
Asia to his proconsular power over the seas and 
coasts. He was already on the ground, and re- 
ceived from the reluctant Lucullus the travel-worn 
legions. In 65 and 64 B. C. he drove Mithridates 
from Pontus and conquered Tigranes. The new 
Roman possessions were assigned to vassal kings. 
Mithridates's spirit broke at last, and he killed him- 
self (63 B. C). Pompeius took Jerusalem and set 
lip Roman authority there (63 B. C), and lingered 



144 Outline History of Rome. 

in the East several years longer before returning 
to Rome for his triumph (61 B. C). 

While Pompey, the general of the Senate and 
the leading Roman, remained in the East, the city 
itself was the scene of a deep laid and well nigh 
successful conspiracy to overthrow the Govern- 
ment. By some unexplained circumstance the 
plot to make Crassus dictator, with Julius Caesar 
his lieutenant, for the year 60 B. C, failed. In 64 
B. C. a new conspiracy was hatched. This time such 
great men as Crassus and Caesar kept aloof from 
the plotting, or at least acknowledged no connec- 
tion with it. The leadership was left to an entirely 
different set of men. Foremost among them was 
Lucius Sergius Catilina (Catiline), a patrician and 
a senator whose ability was as marked as his 
profligacy. Catiline was well qualified for his dan- 
gerous work. He had the boldness and the wick- 
edness of a hardened criminal, and was so deeply 
in debt that only robbery could extricate him. 
His followers were a motley set. " Outcasts from 
honor, fugitives from debt, gamblers and ruffians," 
said Cicero. These men had no higher aim than 
plunder, but many believed that behind this an- 
archistic screen the real leaders of the democracy, 
even Caesar himself, were concealed. Catiline 
had the audacity to stand for the consulship for 
the year 63 B. C, but he was rejected, and a new 
man (iiovus homo) gained the coveted office. This 
man was the Roman Demosthenes, Marcus Tullius 
Cicero. 



The Roman Republic. — III. 



145 







Cicero had come to the city in his youth from 
his home at Arpinuin, the birthplace also of Caius 
Marius. Weak of body, but 
strong of mind, his ambition 
kept him out of the usual mil- 
itary paths to honor and office 
and directed him to the arduous 
wav to the Senate-house which 
led through the forum and the 
law-courts. Cicero was neither 
rich nor favored by influential 
friends, but his intellect and his 
billiant oratory conquered the Marcus Tullius cicero - 
difficulties of public life. Keeping generally on 
the side of the Senate in the strife of parties, 
Cicero made his way through the various grades 
of office until, in this conspiracy-year, 63 B. C, he 
was consul. The senatorial party were inclined to 
sneer at this countryman of no ancestry who had 
pushed his way among them, and the sensitive and 
conceited orator suffered intensely from their 
coldness toward him. 

In 63 B. C. Catiline's plans were matured. He 
would stand for the consulship, kill his compet- 
itors, summon the nondescript army which he had 
collected in Etruria under his friend Manlius, and 4 
give over the city to fire and plunder. By the 
agency of a woman the consul Cicero discovered 
the plot, and on November 8, B. C. 63, laid his 
information before the Senate. Catiline, the im- 
personation of audacity, sat in his place among 
10 



146 Outline Histohy of Rome. 

the senators and listened to Cicero's famous har- 
rangue beginning : " How long, O Catiline, wilt 
thou abuse our patience ? " The arch-conspirator 
fled from the city, leaving trusted agents to kill 
Cicero, fire the city, and open the gates to him as 
he should return with Manlius's army. These 
agents bargained for an alliance with the envoys 
of the Allobroges, a Celtic tribe. But Cicero's 
men captured the envoys as they were leaving 
Rome and found upon them treasonable letters to 
the Celtic chiefs. The conspirators in the city 
were also arrested. The papers were opened and 
read in the Senate. There was no longer any 
doubt of their guilt. The question arose as to 
what should be done with the conspirators. Cicero 
refused to decide, and laid the matter before the 
Senate. Some favored death, others imprisonment. 
Capital punishment was unusual at Rome, and could 
not legally be inflicted except after trial by due 
form of law and by the sanction of the citizens. 
But the danger was pressing; Catiline was march- 
ing on the city; the whole State seemed to be un- 
dermined and ready to explode. Caesar voted no, 
but Cato — the younger of that name — turned the 
tide. He denounced the milder senators as part- 
ners in the crime. There was a hurried change of 
votes, and the Senate decreed the immediate ex- 
ecution of the prisoners. They were strangled in 
prison a few hours after. Cicero flattered himself 
that his consulship had saved the State. Cato 
hailed him pater patrlce, " father of his country," 



The Roman Republic. — III. 



147 



and he retired from office steeped in glory, as his 
extant letters testify. The " army " of Catiline 
and Manlius was defeated at Pistoria (62 B. C.) 
and the renowned Catilinarian conspiracy was thus 
brought to an end by the death of its leader. 




148 Outline History of Rome. 



CHAPTER VI. 

SECOND PERIOD (Continued). 

The Roman Republic. 

Part III (Continued), f 61-31 B. C.) 

FROM THE CONSPIRACY OF CATILINE TO THE FALL 
OF THE REPUBLIC. 

Crassus, Pompeius, and Caesar have already- 
figured in this history and will become still more 
prominent. Their respective characters and polit- 
ical connections must be thoroughly understood in 
order to the comprehension of the history of the 
closing years of the republic. 

Marcus Licinius Crassus was the type of the 
Roman knight. His family was good, but not of 
the highest rank, and his ability was mainly in the 
line of money-getting. The vast extent of Roman 
possessions afforded a wide field for a man of such 
conspicuous business talent as Crassus possessed. 
He was the Rothschild of his time; a banker with 
nations for his clients, a contractor upon public 
works — in short, a bold and successful manipulator 
of capital. He had some military talent, and had 
put down the Servile war. He had much polit- 
ical ambition, and had been consul with Ponrpeius 



The Roman Republic. — III. 



149 



in 70 B. C. The consuls of that year had signal- 
ized their term by an alliance with the popular 
party to do away with the Sullan legislation. In 
this way Crassus had lost caste with the Senate, 
without being fully adopted as a leader of the 
democracy. 

Cneius Pompeius was also of the knights. His 
family were outside the sacred pale of the aris- 
tocracy, and his father had been 
thought lukewarm in his support 
of the Senate. Pompeius was 
born in 106 B. C, and was reared 
as a soldier. We saw him at the 
age of twenty-three levying vol- 
unteers for Sulla, and so gaining 
the dictator's approbation. That 
leader sent him to quench the 
democratic tires in the Sicilian 
and African provinces (80 B. C), 
and on his return allowed him, 
young as he was, the honors of a formal triumph, 
and the title of Magnus — "the Great." As the 
general of the Senate Pompeius ended the Serto- 
rian war in Spain, and was in at the death with 
Crassus when the gladiators of Spartacus were 
captured. With Crassus, too, as consul (70 B. C.) 
he had helped the knights and democrats to strip 
the Senate of its privileges. He gained rich 
rewards from the people by the Gabinian and 
Manilian laws (67, Q6 B. C), which intrusted the 
entire military strength of the realm to him for 




Cneius Pompeius 

Magnus. 
Pompey the Great. 



150 Outline History of Rome. 

three years. He cleared the sea of pirates and 
Asia of enemies. All parties were afraid of him, 
and had he combined his soldierly qualities with 
statesmanship he might have mastered the govern- 
ment as another ambitious general did twenty 
years afterward. But Pompey had lived too long 
in camps. He had little facility in dealing with 
the populace or the politicians, and he had no 
oratory to sway the Senate. He thought the grate- 
ful nation should grant him all his requests out of 
thankfulness for his victories, and he sulked at 
home when his demands were denied. He was 
" out " with the Senate, which feared him, and no 
longer " in " with the democracy, which had now 
in Caesar a more sagacious leader. 

Caius Julius Caesar, the head of the popular 
party, was born in Rome, July 12, 102 B. C. 
(otherwise stated 100 B. C), of 
excellent patrician family. The 
Julian gens had numbered many 
consuls and praetors in its list of 
honors, but this baby boy was des- 
tined to eclipse them all. Caesar's 
aunt, Julia, married Marius, the 
rough democratic soldier, and just 
before he died the "seven times 

consul " honored his nephew by 
Cams Julius Caesar. ... 

appointing him a flamen dialis, a 
high-salaried officer under the State religion. Young 
Caesar married the daughter of the consul Cinna, 
and showed his mettle by defying Sulla's com- 




The Roman Republic- — III. 151 

mand to divorce her. He was outlawed, but 
escaped death in the proscription — perhaps, from 
his obscurity, for he had displayed little ability in 
his subordinate military service in Asia. Pardoned 
after Sulla's death, he served as quaestor in Spain 
(67 B. C), and sank his fortune under a load of 
debt by the magnificence of his administration as 
aedile at Rome (6b B. C). In 63 B. C. the people 
elected him pout If ex maximm, the head of the 
religious order, in spite of the fiercest senatorial 
opposition. 

He was the only great man in Rome. Pompeius 
and Crassus, at the head of their legions or their 
loans, were rendered prominent by circumstances; 
but Caesar alone saw exactly the weakness of the 
State and a way to set it right. He formed a pur- 
pose and arranged his plans for its execution. His 
purpose was to put an end to the murderous strife 
of parties by crushing both in his own mailed hand. 
But as yet the hand held no weapon of offense. 
To carry out his plan an army more loyal to him- 
self than to the State was a necessity. To secure 
such a command for himself Caesar joined the 
First Triumvirate (60 B. C). 

Rome had become accustomed to civil strife, 
and the return of Pompeius from the East was 
awaited with alarm. But the conqueror came 
back as a private citizen, merely asking the Senate 
to ratify his acts in Asia, to reward his soldiers, 
and grant him the honor of a triumph. The de- 
mands were not too great, but the Senate, fearful 



152 Outline History of Home. 

of raising any man to eminence, refused to grant 
them. The politic Caesar, who had lately returned 
from Spain much improved in fortune, showed 
himself a friend to the slighted general, married 
his relative Pompeia for a third wife, and inter- 
ested both Pompeius and Crassus in an arrange- 
ment for the benefit of all three. By this private 
bargain — the First Triumvirate — the three mag- 
nates divided the offices among themselves. Caesar's 
share was one year of consulship (59 B. C.) and five 
years as governor of Gaul. This was his chance 
to pay his debts and train an army. Pompeius 
was to have what the Senate had refused him — a 
triumph, the ratification of his Asiatic policy, and 
lands for his soldiers. Crassus took nothing, but 
secured certain privileges for his order, the knights. 
In his consulship Caesar fulfilled his promises to 
Pompey, the Senate, led by Marcus Porcius Cato, 
an old-fashioned aristocrat, vainly opposing. In 
58 B. C. he went to his province, which included 
Gaul on both sides of the Alps. Pompeius re- 
mained in Italy to watch over the distribution of 
lands among his disbanded veterans. To cripple 
the Senate, the democracy, led by Publius Clodius, 
sent Cato to the East on a public mission, and ban- 
ished Cicero from Italy for killing the Catilinarian 
conspirators without trial. 

The details of Caesar's Gallic wars are not to be 
followed here; it is enough to say that in eight 
years he subdued the Celtic tribes living in the 
countries now known as France, Belgium, and the 



The Roman Republic. — III. 



153 



Netherlands, crossed the Rhine and chastised the 
Germans, crossed the Channel and commenced the 




SCENE OF 1 

CESAR'S CAMPAIGKS 



conquest of Britain. His campaigns left Gaul 
thoroughly pacified and partially Romanized ; the 
Latin language took hold of its people, and it rap- 



154 Outline History of Rome. 

idly assumed an important place in the empire. 
In this warfare Caesar developed the rarest mil- 
itary traits. He was prompt, energetic, fertile in 
resource, and careful of his men. He bound the 
army to him by kindness, by liberality, and by 
complete mastery of his profession as a soldier. 

While Caesar the politician was in Gaul, making 
a new reputation as Caesar the general, Pompeius 
was doing police duty at Rome — watching the par- 
ties and endeavoring to shape a course between 
the factions. Clodius, the demagogue, was out- 
bidden by the demagogue Milo, who persuaded 
the populace to recall Cicero. Cato's term expired, 
and he, too, came back to Rome (57 B. C). The 
consequent increased prestige of the Senate led 
the triumvirs Ponrpey and Crassus to meet Caesar 
at Luca in his province, 56 B. C, to arrange a new 
programme. Caesar stipulated for the extension of 
his term for another five years. At its close he 
was to be consul for 48 B. C, and was to be ex- 
cused from coming to Rome as a candidate. Pom- 
pey and Crassus were to be consuls (55 B. C), 
followed by five years of pro-consular government, 
the former in Spain, the latter in Syria. The terms 
of the bargain were carried out. Caesar went on 
with his conquests; Crassus went to Syria, where 
he was killed after the Parthians had defeated 
him in the great battle of Carrhae. Pompeius sent 
lieutenants to manage his Spanish province, but 
himself lingered at Rome. 

The death of Crassus destroyed the triumvirate. 



The Roman Republic. — III. 155 

Caesar's daughter, Pompey's wife, died. The Sen- 
ate feared Caesar's return more than the greatness 
of Pompeius. The disorders in the city warranted 
the Senate in proclaiming martial law. Pompeius 
was ordered to enforce the measure; he accepted 
the commission, thus becoming the open defender 
of the aristocracy and the consequent foe of 
Caesar's friends, the democrats. The breach be- 
tween Caesar and the Senate was openly made and 
widened rapidly. Caesar was safe while in Gaul 
at the head of an army; but under the laws he 
could not return to the city without resigning his 
command. The law which made him pro-consul 
had declared that he might be a candidate for the 
consulship for 48 B. C. without complying w r ith 
the usual formality of presenting himself in per- 
son to the city electors. The Senate insisted that 
this law was invalid, and that Caesar must resign 
if he sought office before his term of command in 
Gaul expired. In the excited state of the city at 
that time he would certainly have been imprisoned 
upon his return, even had he escaped assassination. 
Throughout the years 51 and 50 B. C. Caesar and 
the Senate fought a battle of diplomacy on this 
point. Caesar was absent, to be sure, but he had 
become wealthy in Gaul and could buy the support 
of consuls and tribunes as he needed it. His creat- 
ure, the tribune Curio, accepted the Senate's bill 
deposing Caesar, but demanded that Pompey should 
lay down his power at the same time. Pompeius 
refused. The struggle, which was nominally be- 



156 Outline History of Rome. 

tween the Senate and Caesar, became actually a 
duel for the supremacy which must end in the mon- 
archy either of Caesar or Pompey. The latter 
assumed command of the army in Italy in Decem- 
ber, 50 B. C, at the request of the consuls-elect. 
On January 1, 49 B. C, a final letter from Caesar 
was read in the Senate. While maintaining the 
justice of his position, he offered to give up the 
greater part of his provinces and all but one of 
his legions if he might stand for the consulship 
in his absence. But the Senate, which had pinned 
its faith upon the generalship of Pompeius, declared 
Caesar a traitor if he should not immediately resign 
all his command. Curio and Antony hastened to 
him at Ravenna with the news. It was expected. 
The Senate had declared war, and there was no 
time to lose. " The die is cast," said Caesar, as he 
led his army across the little river Rubicon which 
divided his province from his country. 

In the Civil War there is nothing more remark- 
able than the consummate military genius exhib- 
ited by Caesar. Pompey the Great was a soldier 
of more than ordinary talents. But his reputation 
had outstripped his merits. The fame of his 
early achievements under Sulla, his share in the 
Sertorian and Servile wars, his suppression of 
piracy, and final victory over Mithridates and the 
East, constituted an unbroken series of successes 
whose marked contrast with the sorry failures of 
most senatorial generals, made him seem to the 
aristocracy — and, doubtless, to himself — invincible. 



The Roman Republic. — III. 157 

Caesar, on the contrary, had left Rome eight years 
before with no military record. He was now a 
conqueror, but surely, reasoned the nobles, it was 
not so hard for a Roman to subdue the half -bar- 
barian Gauls and Germans. It would be a different 
matter to make head against Cneius Pompeius 
Magnus ! So they thronged to the head-quarters 
of the Pompeian army in Campania confident of 
victory, and eager for the battle which should put 
an end to Caesar's presumption. But Pompeius 
was too cautious to oppose Caesar with a small or 
an undisciplined army. While he awaited recruits 
at Capua Caesar was in vigorous action. His vet- 
eran legions were hurried into Italy, the young 
men of Cisalpine Gaul, to whom he had promised 
Roman citizenship, poured into his camps and 
overtook him on the march. He waited for noth- 
ing, but hastened down the eastern side of the 
peninsula, sending Marcus Antonius (Mark An- 
tony) over the Apennines with a detachment to 
take the road to Rome. Pompeius lingered at 
Capua and did nothing. He expected the Italians 
to enlist under him, but there was scarcely an Ital- 
ian town on Caesar's route that did not welcome 
the democratic leader. Not only the Italian cit- 
izens, but the Roman garrisons in their citadels 
hailed the conqueror of Gaul as a friend. Domitius 
Ahenobarbus occupied a road-fortress and at- 
tempted to block the path of invasion. His 
troops mutinied and gave him up to Caesar, who 
pardoned him and his companions. Pompeius 



158 Outline History of Rome. 

waited no longer. In April, 49 B. C, he crossed 
from Brundisium to Greece with his army and a 
cumbrous crowd of senators and aristocrats, aban- 
doning Italy without a battle. Henceforth Italy 
was Caesar's, but the empire was not yet won. 
The Pompeians held Spam and Africa in the West 
and the entire Roman" dominion in the East. 
Greece was a convenient recruiting-ground, and 
from his station there Pompeius could gather 
strength until fit occasion offered to recross the 
narrow seas and give battle to the usurper. 

Caesar did not follow ; he had no fleet, and 
he was confident that Pompeius would not soon 
feel strong enough to attempt the re-conquest of 
Italy. Rome was without defenders and Caesar 
entered the city unopposed. If the aristocrats 
had feared what the massacres of Marius and 
Sulla gave them reason to expect they were pleas- 
antly disappointed. Life and private property 
were spared. The remnant of the Senate declined 
to grant Caesar's request for the consulship, and he 
accordingly assumed the responsibility of govern- 
ment. With the authority of the popular assem- 
bly he drew money from the public treasury and 
hastened to Spain to crush the Pompeian party 
there. Before the end of the year he completed 
the work and returned to Rome. The people 
named him dictator, but he resigned this office and 
was chosen consul for 48 B. C, the office which 
had been promised him at the meeting of the tri- 
umvirs at Luca in 56 B. C, and from which the 



The Roman Republic. — III. 159 

aristocrats had endeavored to exclude him. The 
Senate was now in Greece with Pompeius, holding 
sessions and formally conducting the Government. 

Caesar stayed but eleven days in Rome, and then 
hastened to Brundisium, to forestall, if possible, 
Pompey's return. The latter had a great army of 
Romans and allies, and a numerous co-operating 
fleet. By his own good fortune, or by the stupidity 
of the commander of the senatorial fleet, Caesar 
with half his force crossed the sea unopposed. 
The other half, under Mark Antony, was cooped 
up at Brundisium. The Pompeian army was en- 
camped at Dyrrachium. Caesar had landed south 
of that point. Antony ran the blockade and 
landed further north. The two armies united 
before Pompeius was aware of their temporary 
isolation. But he broke through their lines and 
marched into Thessaly in the spring of 48 B. C. 
This slight success convinced his party that the 
next battle would be Caesar's ruin. The next bat- 
tle was fought at Pharsalus, August 9, 48 B. C. 
The Pompeians were utterly routed. Thousands 
were killed, and twenty-four thousand surrendered 
to Caesar and his twenty -two thousand. Pompeius 
fled to the sea-shore and took ship. On landing 
in Egypt he was murdered by order of the king. 
His lieutenants dispersed throughout the prov- 
inces, fearful of Caesar's vengeance. 

It was the conqueror's purpose not to build until 
he had laid the foundation. The Romans heaped 
their honors upon him — the consulship for five 



160 Outline History of Rome. 

years, the tribunate for life, the dictatorship for 
one year ; but he did not return to the city while 
enemies remained in the provinces. Egj^pt was 
his first destination. Here the rise of the Alex- 
andrines and the Roman garrison placed him in 
extreme peril, from which he was saved by cour- 
age and promptitude. With timely re-enforce- 
ments he defeated the Egyptian army. Cleopatra 
was established as queen, and then Caesar hurried 
off to Asia Minor. Pharnaces, the son of Mith- 
ridates, had extended his dominions, thinking to 
go unnoticed and unpunished in the tumult of the 
Civil war; the pro-consul had opposed him in vain. 
Leaving Alexandria, Caesar hurried through Syria 
and Asia Minor to Pontus, demanded the submis- 
sion of Pharnaces, and compelled it after a five 
days' campaign. "Yeni, vldi, vici" "I came, I 
saw, I conquered," is the famous form in which he 
announced his victory. 

The East and most of the West were now at 
Caesar's feet. His mastery of the Roman world was 
assured, although the two sons of Pompeius, with 
Cato and other irreconcilables, hopelessly defied 
him in Africa and elsewhere. Cicero had cut a 
poor figure in the affairs of the past two years. 
By nature and training a conservative, he had 
clung to the senatorial party, though he did not 
abandon Italy with its leaders. After the death 
of Pompeius he accepted Caesar's government as 
an established fact, and was thereupon read out of 
the senatorial party. Still he took no earnest part 



The Roman Republic. — III. 



161 



in public affairs, and was regarded as a political 
trimmer whose course was determined by his 
personal safety rather than by principle. The 
men who had the most to fear from Caesar — Labi- 
enus, his old lieutenant, Sextus and Cneius Pom- 
pey, Afranius, and Petreius — and the fanatical 
adherents of the lost republican cause, like Cato, 
collected a formidable army at 
Utica, near the ruins of Car- 
thage, in Africa. On his return 
from the East by way of Italy, 
Caesar had to face a new peril. 
His successes thus far had been 
won by the fidelity of the le- 
gions which he had trained in 
the Gallic wars. They had sym- 
pathized with his cause and had 
shared his campaigns. They 
now demanded rewards and re- 
lease from service. The tenth legion, which had 
borne the brunt of the hardest attacks in Gaul, 
broke into open mutiny and appealed to Caesar to 
redress their wrongs. He satisfied them, and by a 
wonderful display of coolness and tact won them 
back to renewed devotion. Losing little time at 
Rome, Caesar crossed to Africa (47 B. C.) and 
routed the republican army on the field of Thapsus. 
His soldiers, wearied with chasing rebellion around 
the Mediterranean, granted no mercy; 50,000 men 
were killed; Cato, "the last of the Romans," died 
a republican, falling on his own sword rather than 
11 




Marcus Porcius Catu. 
" Uticensis." 



162 Outline History of Rome. 

accept pardon from Caesar. Labienus and the 
sons of Pompey rallied a new army in Spain, but 
Caesar, who had already neglected Italy too long, 
returned to Rome (46 B. C). There he celebrated 
four magnificent triumphs — for Gaul, Egypt, Pon- 
tus, and Africa — and delighted the populace with 
splendid shows and games. 

Caesar was really king or emperor of Rome. 
The Senate — what was left of it after the Civil 
war — and the public assemblies existed only to 
give formal assent to his decrees. He wore the 
purple robe of royalty, but the old prejudice 
against kings denied him the title and crown. 
Yet he was made dictator for ten years, and then 
became censor and high-priest for life. Uniting 
these offices in himself he set about his reforms. 
These measures were not intended to revive the 
old constitution. In the struggles of the hundred 
years' war the Gracchi had tried to save the State 
by magnifying the power of the popular assem- 
blies, and Sulla had strengthened the Senate with 
the same end in view. Caesar allowed both Senate 
and assemblies to exist, but deprived them of real 
power. All responsible authority centered in him- 
self as monarch of the Roman Empire. Candi- 
dates for public office, like the laws, must have his 
approval. In the army, the legislature, and the 
Church, he was supreme. The ancient republican 
forms, Senate, comitia, consuls, praetors, and trib- 
unes, remained, but their life was extinguished. 
From the chief executive power in the State the 



The Roman Republic. — III. 163 

Senate was degraded to the place of an advisatory 
council. Its membership was raised to nine hun- 
dred, and its aristocratic exclusiveness was invaded 
by the admission of prominent men not only from 
the Italian cities but from Gaul and Spain. Be- 
sides these foreigners even some of the liberated 
slaves were admitted to seats in this old chamber 
of the nobles. The Cisalpine Gauls were con- 
firmed in the rights of citizenship which Caesar 
had promised them. The great body of Roman 
law was reduced to systematic form and published 
to guide the decisions of the law courts. Even 
the calendar was reached in this comprehensive 
scheme of reform, and the Julian solar year of three 
hundred and sixty-five days and six hours super- 
seded the irregular year of twelve lunar months, 
by which time had hitherto been computed. 

In the midst of these plans of re-organization 
Caesar was called to Spain by the defeat of his 
lieutenants. He took with him Octavianus Caesar, 
his grand-nephew and adopted heir. The Pom- 
peians offered battle on the plain of Munda, near 
Cordova, March 17, 45 B. C. They knew the 
temper of Caesar's soldiers and understood that 
defeat meant death. The two armies were of 
nearly equal strength, and both were ably led. 
There was no skirmishing, no exhibition of tactics; 
the men fought fiercely at close range with sword 
and spear, their leaders in the thickest of the fight. 
Caesar's desperate efforts and his personal bravery 
won the victory. Thirty thousand Pompeians, 



164 Outline History of Rome. 

including many of rank, fell, but Sextus Pompey 
escaped to the mountains. Munda was the imper- 
ator's last great battle ; after restoring his authority 
in Spain he returned to Rome. 

Measures for the consolidation and defense of 
the empire occupied the great man's mind. The 
provinces had hitherto suffered from the loose 
government of the Senate; Caesar took to himself 
the right of appointing the provincial governors. 
Criminals had escaped through the right of appeal 
to an easily-influenced populace; Caesar abolished 
the right of appeal except to himself as supreme 
judge. Short terms of office and frequent changes 
had diminished the authority of the magistrates, 
and enhanced the power of the perpetual Senate; 
Caesar held office for life and gained the right to 
name his successor. Other generals had made 
conquests and organized provinces without regard 
to the interests of the empire; Caesar endeavored 
to form a " scientific " and easily -defended fron- 
tier. The Rhine, the Alps, the Danube, the Cau- 
casus, the Euphrates, were the natural boundaries 
of the empire, and he recognized the folly of gain- 
ing a precarious foot-hold beyond them. At one 
important point the frontier of Rome was still 
weak, and the dignity of the Roman arms was not 
respected. It was on the borders of Syria, where 
the Parthians had defeated Crassus, the triumvir 
(53 B. C). Caesar meant to avenge that insult, and 
made preparations for a Parthian campaign. A 
republican conspiracy prevented their completion. 



The Roman Republic. — III. 



10 



Caesar had pardoned his enemies, but they had 
not forgiven him. The aristocrats who had es- 
caped alive from the Civil war were not pro- 
scribed. The dictator treated them with kindness 
and forbearance, gave them honors, seats in the 
Senate, and provinces abroad. But his effort to 
attach them to his person was a failure. The rem- 
nant of the ancient aristocracy, whose incapacity 
to govern had brought on the evils that Csesarism 
was trying to correct, still plotted in secret for the 
old constitution. Cicero was, in heart, at least, 
with this republican faction, though his voice was 
on the side of Caesar. The leading conspirators — 
nearly all senators of high birth — were M. Junius 
Brutus, Cassius, Decimus Brutus, Trebonius, Cim- 
ber, and Dolabella. Marcus Junius Brutus de- 
serves especial mention. He was the nephew and 
son-in-law of Cato, the sturdy pa- 
triot who had killed himself at 
Utica rather than survive the re- 
public. Brutus shared his uncle's 
devotion to the republican form 
of government; he was honest, and 
held a high place in the esteem of 
Caesar and of the Senate. But the 
conspirators persuaded him that 
Rome was suffering from another 
tyranny like that of the Tarquins, 
and that, as in the ancient days, a Brutus must 
bring back the republic. It was easy to work 
upon his sentimental and superstitious temper- 




Marcus Junius 
Brutus. 



166 Outline History of Rome. 

anient, and he was soon won over, notwitstanding 
the tokens of Caesar's confidence which he had 
received. 

Many features of the dictatorship aroused the 
Roman prejudice against kings. Caesar's purple 
robe and golden chair, his concentrated power, 
and his selection of his own successor, were suf- 
ficient evidence of the royal character of his posi- 
tion; still he put away the offered crown. As the 
Ides of March (March 15, 44 B. C.) drew near 
preparations for his assassination were perfected. 
Sixty senators were implicated in the plot, and 
rumors of their purpose were not silent in the city. 
Caesar was warned, but took no precautions and 
provided no body-guard. As he entered the meet- 
ing-place of the Senate on the morning of the 
fatal 15th the "liberators" crowded upon him 
and attacked him with their daggers. Pierced 
with twenty-three wounds he fell and died at the 
foot of a statue of Pompeius, which stood by. 
Brutus, the fanatic, dipped his blade in Caesar's 
streaming blood and brandished it in the face of 
Cicero, crying, "Liberty is restored!" 

But liberty was not restored, as the liberators 
themselves learned. Mark Antony was consul 
and an executor of Caesar's will. He made alliance 
with Lepidus, Caesar's lieutenant, who was at the 
gates with an army. Veterans of the Gallic wars, 
who cared more for their former leader's memory 
than they did for the republic which he had over- 
thrown, were in the city awaiting the lands which 



The Roman Republlc. — III. 



167 



had been promised thern. Antony, Lepidus, and 
the army had not entered into the conspirators' 
calculations, and their sudden appearance altered 
the footing. Instead of treating Caesar as a traitor 
the liberators humored the temper of soldiery 
and populace by granting his body honorable se- 
pulture. The remains were placed in the forum, 
and there Mark Antony addressed the people. He 
read the dead man's will, which 
bequeathed his money to each cit- 
izen and his gardens to all. Gain- 
ing their favor thus he played 
upon their feelings, showed them 
that it was as their champion that 
Caesar had risen and triumphed, 
and as their friend that the aristo- 
crats had struck him down. He 
inspired them with frenzied devo- 
tion to Caesar and fierce hatred of 
the conspirators. In solemn enthusiasm they built 
a funeral pyre in the forum, and there burned the 
body of their dead hero. 

The conspirators, alarmed by the popular horror 
at their deed, dispersed in haste. To several of 
them provinces had been assigned by Caesar. Mar- 
cus Brutus was to govern Macedonia, and Decimus 
Brutus was to have Cisalpine Gaul. Antony had 
fully determined to succeed to Caesar's power, and 
had no mind to allow these two neighboring and 
wealthy provinces to remain in the hands of the 
leading conspirators. He accordingly persuaded 




Marcus Antonius. 
" Mark Antony.' 1 



168 Outline History of Rome. 

the people that the late dictator had changed his 
intention regarding the appointments. Marcus 
and Decimus Brutus were, therefore, assigned by 
popular decree to other offices, and the govern- 
ment of both Macedonia and Cisalpine Gaul was 
given to Antony himself. But the governors had 
already reached their provinces and must be ex- 
pelled. Decimus Brutus, in northern Italy, was 
the first to be attacked. While Antony was in 
the field asrainst him the young Octavius returned 
to Rome from Greece, accompanied by his friend, 
Agrippa. The adopted son and heir of Caesar 
was in his nineteenth year. The news of his 
uncle's death and his own preference in the will 

aroused his ambition, and he 
hastened to Italy, taking the 
adoptive name Caius Julius 
Caesar Octavianus. With the 
adroitness of an older pol- 
itician he ingratiated himself 
with Cicero and the Senate, 
posing as the friend of the 
republic and the foe of An- 
tony. Caesar's old soldiers 
hailed with pleasure the hand- 
some youth whom they had 
Caesar octavianus. seen in Caesar's companv. He 

" The Young Augustus." , -. . -. , 

had certainly some elements 
of strength, and the Senate was in sore need of a 
champion. Cicero's keenness had penetrated the 
purposes of Antony, against whom the great orator 




The Roman Republic. — III. 169 

was now thundering his Philippics. By his mar- 
velous eloquence he aroused the Senate to action. 
The boy Octavianus was given a prsetorship and 
a military command, and sent northward with the 
two consuls of 43 B. C. to crush Antony, who was 
declared an outlaw. Both consuls perished in the 
war, and the heir of Caesar was thus left at the 
head of an army. The Senate had intended to 
throw him over as soon as he had served its pur- 
pose, and now refused him the consulship which 
he demanded. He, too, crossed the Rubicon and, 
contrary to the Senate's express command, entered 
the city and compelled the assembly to elect him 
consul. This chief magistrate, aged twenty-one, 
secured a decree of outlawry upon Caesar's assas- 
sins and then returned to the north. Lepidus, 
Caesar's former " master of the horse," and An- 
tony, joined their forces and routed Decimus Bru- 
tus. Octavianus threw over the Senate's cause 
as the Senate would have abandoned him. With 
his uncle's friends, Antony and Lepidus, he formed 
the Second Triumvirate (43 B. C.) "for establish- 
ing the republic." For the present there was to 
be no division of power among the three generals. 
They were to have equal consular authority for 
live years, and their acts were to be beyond the 
jurisdiction of Senate or assembly. The " repub- 
lic " which they established was really the Caesa- 
rian government, with a tripartite dictatorship. 
Such a government was destined to last only until 
dissensions should reduce the triune dictatorship 



170 Outline History of Rome. 

to a monarchy. In Italy the triumvirs had equal 
authority; Spain and the West were assigned to 
Lepidus, Antony took Gaul, on both sides of the 
Alps; Africa, Sicily, and Sardinia fell to Octavi- 
anus. The East was prudently reserved for later 
division, as it was already in the hands of the con- 
spirators. Brutus was in Macedonia, assembling 
the troops which Cassias and others had collected 
in Asia. This republican army was formidable 
in numbers and composition, and really threatened 
the discomfiture of the triumvirs. Before assum- 
ing charge of their provinces the latter resolved 
to attack Brutus. Previous to leaving Italy, how- 
ever, they secured a formal vote of the people 
legalizing their actions, and then in cold blood 
set about the proscription of their private and 
political enemies. The lists of the proscribed 
included hundreds of honorable citizens who were 
the victims of personal spite or of the informer's 
greed. The patriotic Cicero, whose vanity and 
political indecision do not invalidate his claim to 
the second place in the Roman honor-roll, was 
murdered to gratify the hate of Antony (Dec. 7, 
43 B. C). 

The republican army numbered 100,000 men, 
gathered from all the Roman East. Extortion 
and plunder supplied the funds for its support. 
In 42 B. C. Antony and Octavianus passed over 
to Epirus with a force of equal if not greater 
strength. The heirs of Caesar and his murderers 
met at Philippi, in Thrace, afterward famous as the 



The Roman Republic— III. 171 

home of the first Christian church in Europe. 
Two battles were fought here in November, 42 
B. C. On the first day Cassius was defeated by 
Antony and killed himself in despair, ignorant 
that the division of Octavianus had meanwhile 
been driven back by Brutus. The death of Cas- 
sius deprived the republican army of its real leader. 
Brutus was a philosopher, but no ruler of men, 
and his soldiers broke loose from all restraint. 
Twenty days after the first battle a second was 
fought. The result was doubtful, and Brutus, 
despairing of success and deserted by his legions, 
took his own life. The triumvirs conquered, and 
the last struggle for the old republic was at an 
end. 

Lepidus, rich and indolent, had been neglected 
in the late campaign, and was slighted in the 
re-distribution of the prov- 
inces, receiving only "Af- 
rica," — that is, the small 
Roman province of that 
name. Already the theo- 
retical equality of the tri- 
umvirs was disturbed, and 
the two naturally stronger 
men were asserting their 
authority. From Philippi 
Antony marched through Cleopatra. 

Asia, reclaiming the East. In Syria he met the 
far-famed "Serpent of the Nile," Cleopatra, the 
woman whose beauty had captivated Julius Caesar 




172 



Outline History of Rome. 



and won for her the throne of Egypt. The rough 
triumvir was an easy conquest. He accompanied 
her to Alexandria, her capital, and lived there 
with her in the most shameless and extravagant 
debauchery. His wife, Fulvia, and his brother, 
Lucius Antonius, were in Italy, and stirred up 
a civil war in the hope of summoning him to 
Rome. They thwarted the efforts of Octavianus 
to regulate affairs at home and to reward his 
soldiers by grants of land and the foundation 
of new colonies. In conjunction with Lepidus he 
took up arms against the Anto- 
' X ^\V^^ nians and captured their strong- 
hold, Perusia (41 B. C). These 
disorders recalled the pleasure- 
loving Antony to his senses. He 
hurried to Italy with an army, 
and there came to an understand- 
ing with his colleagues. Lepidus 
was content to retain the admin- 
istration of his single province, 
while Octavianus took the West, 
with Italy, and Antony the East, with Cleopatra. 
The marriage of Antony and Octavia, young 
Caesar's sister, sealed the bond of reunion. This 
partition of the Roman lands did not convey the 
sovereignty of the sea. Sextus, that vigorous son 
of Pompey the Great w r ho had escaped death at 
Pharsalus, Thapsus, and Munda, had gathered a 
fleet and placed himself at the head of the Mediter- 
ranean pirates. He did not care to renew the battle 




Marcus iEmilius 
Lepidus. 



The Roman Republic— III. 173 

for the republic, but he had his father's death to 
avenge and his family fortune to recover. Rome's 
food supply came from Sicily, Asia, and Africa 
by sea, and the ships of Sextus, by the capture of 
the grain-fleet, held the city in constant peril of 
famine. To buy him off, the triumvirs, in 39 B. C, 
signed the treaty of Misenum, in which they agreed 
to restore his father's confiscated millions and 
allow him full control of Sicily, Sardinia, and a 
large part of Greece. But Sextus offended Octa- 
vianus by seizing an Italian coast town, and the 
triumvirs soon re-opened the war. In 37 B. C. 
the Sextian fleet was soundly beaten and its pirate 
admiral deprived of power. Lepidus asked that 
Sicily be now added to his department; but the 
western ruler, jealous of his territory, not only 
refused this favor, but took Africa for himself, 
thus thrusting Lepidus out of the triumvirate (36 
B. C). In 38 B. C. the term of the three men 
had been extended for a second five years, and 
Octavianus and Antony had thus three years more 
of power. The former adopted the policy of Caesar 
and undertook campaigns against the Illyrians, 
who intervened between the Roman province and 
the River Danube, the natural boundary of con- 
quest in that direction. In his military and naval 
operations the triumvir, still under thirty, had the 
advice of Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, and in all 
business of civil government the knight, Cilnius 
Maecenas, was his trusted counselor. In the East 
Antony held royal court at Alexandria. The 



174 Outline History of Rome. 

Egyptian, Cleopatra, was favored, and Octavia, 
his proud Roman wife, was put aside. His expe- 
dition against the Parthians, 36 B. C, was an utter 
failure; but a later raid into Armenia yielded the 
honor of a triumph which, to the disgust of the 
Romans, was celebrated in Alexandria instead of 
at Rome. This report fed the current suspicion 
in Italy that Cleopatra had persuaded Antony to 
discrown the queen city of the world and remove 
the capital of the Roman world to Alexandria. 
Antony's treatment of Octavia widened the breach 
between the triumvirs. In 32 B. C. the smolder- 
ing rivalry burst into the flame of war. Antony 
and Cleopatra collected an enormous armament for 
the invasion of Italy. Four Asiatic kings con- 
tributed to the army, and the ships of many na- 
tions composed the fleet. The delay consequent 
upon the assemblage, transportation, and suste- 
nance of such a force enabled Octavianus and his 
lieutenants to summon the utmost of his compar- 
atively meager resources. The East was populous, 
wealthy, and full of ships and seamen. The West 
was inferior in all these particulars, but immeas- 
urably superior in the personality of its present 
leader. Antony was broken by dissipation, infat- 
uated with a wicked woman, and could not com- 
mand the confidence of his motley army. Octa- 
vianus Caesar had the advantages of a great name, 
of ten years' honest and capable administration, of 
a united and devoted following, and of Agrip- 
pa's constant counsel and encouragement. 



The Roman Republic. — III. 



175 



The two armies confronted each other for a time in 
Greece. Desertions from Antony's army alarmed 
him. On the 2d of September, 31 B. C, the two 
fleets engaged in a naval battle. After the first 
encounter Cleopatra turned her vessel's prow to- 
ward Egypt. Antony saw the movement, joined 
her on board, and the craven pair deserted the sea- 
fight, which became a scene of rout and destruc- 
tion. Octavianus was completely victorious, thanks 
to the skill of Agrippa. The Antonian army sur- 
rendered as soon as the fate of the fleet was known, 
The next year (30 B. C.) the vic- 
tor invaded Egypt. Antony's 
resistance was but half-hearted, 
and his troops refused to fight. 
Even Cleopatra, foreseeing his 
ruin, and bent on making good 
terms with the new master, 
turned from the lover whom she 
Lad dragged to ruin. When her 
servants falsely told him of her 
death, Mark Antony, the friend 
of Caesar and the ruler of the 
East, destroyed his miserable 
life. Alexandria surrendered to Octavianus, but 
the conqueror did not bend the knee to the city's 
queen. She had hoped to take captivity captive 
as she had done before; but the new Caesar was 
forewarned of her wiles. He spared her life to 
grace his triumph at Rome, but she escaped that 
humiliation. In some unknown way, perhaps by 




Marcus Vipsanius 
Agrippa. 



176 Outline History of Rome. 

the sting of an asp, as some of the old stories have 
it, her spirit followed the ruined Antony out of 
the world in which it had so delighted. 

The deposition of Lepidus and the death of 
Antonius reduced the triumvirate to its lowest 
terms. The power which this board of three men 
had usurped in the confusion after Caesar's death 
was now concentrated in the single survivor, 
Octavianus. Julius Caesar had forever answered 
in the negative the question whether the republic 
could longer exist. The hundred years of civil 
war from Gracchus to Caesar had proved the in- 
capacity of the Senate as a governing body, and 
the reformers, the Gracchi, Drusus, Sulla, had suc- 
cessively failed to create a competent and stable 
government out of either of the elements at hand, 
the aristocracy or the democracy. A king was 
inevitable, and years of proscription and civil 
murders taught the Romans the folly of resist- 
ance. What the republic could do it had already 
done. So long as its citizen-body and its aristo- 
cratic Senate were simple, sober, frugal, and pa- 
triotic, its power extended. The citizen armies of 
Rome conquered Italy, Carthage, the western and 
the eastern world. But wealth and power brought 
to the aristocrats decay of morals, greed of power 
and gain. The slave system destroyed free labor 
and exterminated the middle class of citizens. 
With a corrupt nobility and a beggared populace 
the State lost its balance. The provinces were 
misgoverned and robbed ; successful generals 



The Roman Republic. — III. 



177 



seized the civil power. At last a general and a 
statesman crushed the whole frail fabric of the 
republic and made himself monarch of the Ro- 
man world. He fell a victim to the sentimental 
attachment which a few still cherished for the old 
Commonwealth, but the republic never got upon 
its feet again ; after a dozen years of divided 
sovereignty Caesarian power was reunited in the 
person of Caasar Octavianus, the very person 
whom the great founder of the empire had chosen 
to succeed him. Thus the worn-out republic ex- 
pired, and a greater monarchy took its place, a lit- 
tle less than five centuries after the last Tarquin 
king was banished by the first Brutus and the 
patrician revolution. 

When the first monarchy closed Rome was su- 
preme among the Latins, the farmers who tilled 
the soil of Latium ; the new monarchy found 
Rome the capital of the world. 





Coin of Antony and Cleopatra. 



12 



The Roman Empire. — I. 179 



CHAPTER VII. 

THIRD PE RIOD. 

The Roman Empire. (507 years.) 31 B. C- 
476 A. D. 

Part I. 31 B. C.-192 A. D. 

FROM AUGUSTUS TO COMMODUS. 

The defeat of Antony, B. C. 31, left Caesar 
Octavianus sole master of the many lands which 
the Roman republic had conquered. After years 
of foreign war and civil strife the world was at 
peace. The doors of the Roman temple of Janus, 
which were always open in war-time, were now 
closed for the third time in history — once before, 
in the reign of Numa Pompilius, and again after 
the second Punic war. Having crushed all op- 
position in the East Octavianus returned to Rome 
(29 B. C.) to celebrate his triumph and to organ- 
ize a system of government for the vast empire of 
which he was the undisputed chief. 

In this work he enjoyed the able assistance of 
Agrippa and Maecenas, and profited by the warn- 
ing example of Julius Caesar, who, confronted 
by a similar task, had called down his own destruc- 
tion by too bold assumption of royal prerogatives 
and symbols. There are several reasons for the 



180 



Outline History of Rome. 



success of Octavianus in a task in which his 
greater kinsman, Julius, failed. The very fact that 
there had already been a Caesar detracted some- 
what from the popular dread of an absolute ruler. 
During the protracted civil wars a generation had 
grown up which had no personal knowledge of the 
better days of the republic, and consequently pre- 
ferred peace and material prosperity under the new 
regime to a renewal of war and sacrifice for the re- 
establishment of the Commonwealth. Moreover 
the new government assumed the form and donned 
the outer garb of the old. We shall see how the 
old republican institutions faded by scarcely visi- 
ble degrees into the new empire. 

Octavianus assumed neither the symbols nor the 
title of king. " Imperator " was 
a term already in use to desig- 
nate an officer who held a high 
military command. As com- 
mander-in-chief of the army Oc- 
tavianus and his successors bore 
that title, to which our ears are 
accustomed in its shortened form 
" emperor." The emperor was 
. also elected to all the high of- 
peror. (31 b. C.-14 a.d.) fices of the republic. He was 
dictator, with the supreme authority which always 
accompanied that position; as consul he could 
convene the Senate; as censor he could enroll or 
expel members of that body; as tribune he was 
the special magistrate of the common people and 




The Roman Empire. — I. 181 

his life was sacred; the State religion was under 
his care as pontifex maximus. A new title was 
needed to comprehend all this authority, and ac- 
cordingly in 27 B. C. the Senate decreed to Oc- 
tavianus the surname of Augustus ("his maj- 
esty "). This name was assumed as a title by all 
his successors, but to Octavianus, the first who 
bore it, it belongs in an especial sense, and hence- 
forth Augustus is his name. The sixth month 
of the Roman year was named Augustilis (Au- 
gust) in his honor, as the fifth had been named 
July, from his father Julius. 

It had been a fruitful source of Roman ills that 
the republican Senate had applied no coherent sys- 
tem to the government of the outlying provinces. 
To hold a nation by force of arms while a praetor 
or proconsul plundered its treasury was the Sen- 
ate's highest achievement in provincial govern- 
ment. The consequence had been a constant tend- 
ency in the realm to fall apart. The Augustan 
system w^as an undoubted improvement. Au- 
gustus classed the provinces as senatorial or im- 
perial. The former, being thoroughly subdued 
and far from the frontier, were administered by 
governors appointed by the Senate as heretofore, 
except that a financial agent accompanied them to 
collect the emperor's private share of the revenue. 
The " imperial " provinces were those of more re- 
cent origin or more exposed situation. These 
were administered by the legates or military lieu- 
tenants of the imperator. 



182 Outline History of Rome. 

This resulted in a uniform method of control. 
So long as the emperor was vigilant in his super- 
intendence of his legates, and was himself honest 
and just, the provincials were well governed. As 
the empire became more firmly established they 
were encouraged to aspire to the full rights of 
Roman citizenship, which had already been ex- 
tended to Latins, Italians, and Cisalpine Gauls. 
When this process of Romanization was completed 
the provincials considered themselves no longer as 
vanquished people, but as fellow-countrymen of 
the Romans and partakers in Roman greatness. 
Gauls, Spaniards, Greeks, Asiatics, Africans, and 
Egyptians were proud of the Roman name and 
" the eternal city," now for the first time really 
their capital. 

Augustus strove to make Rome worthy of the 
empire. The buildings of the city were shabby, 
the streets narrow and steep, the public squares 
and temples small and unkept. The epoch of civil 
disorder had wasted the money which should have 
gone for public works. Hundreds of buildings 
were now pulled down at the emperor's order, new 
squares were laid out, fine houses erected, temples 
renovated, and walls repaired. A police force pre- 
served order in the city and throughout Italy, then, 
as now, a favorite haunt of brigands. The splen- 
did roads which radiated from Rome through the 
peninsula were extended to all parts of the em- 
pire, and a postal system for the use of the govern- 
ment facilitated rapid communication with distant 



The Roman Empire. — I. 183 

provinces. The age was one of material prosperity. 
Peace and better government nurtured commer- 
cial activity. Trade sprang up between the prov- 
inces, lifting to wealth and prominence many hap- 
pily-situated ports about the Mediterranean. It 
was the boast of Augustus that he "found Rome 
built of brick and left it built of marble; " but his 
reign left something more enduring than the finest 
product of the Parian quarries. His friend Mae- 
cenas was the especial patron of art and letters, 
and his encouragement and bounty made Rome 
for the first time in its history a literary center. 
In the sunshine of imperial favor flourished the 
poets Virgil (70-19 B. C), Horace (65-8 B. C), 
Tibullus (54-19 B. C), Propertius (49-15 B. C), 
Ovid (45 B. C.-17 A. D.), and the historian Livy 
(59 B. C.-17 A. D.). 

The wars of Augustus were chiefly along the 
frontiers of the empire. Scarcely a province re- 
volted from its allegiance, and the government was 
thus left free to regulate its boundaries. Roman 
dominion was extended to the Danube (29-15 
B. C), the free remnant of Spain was subdued 
(27-19 B. C), and the Parthians, who had not yet 
been chastised for their insult to the Roman arms 
at Carrhae, voluntarily returned the trophies of that 
victory and made peace. Gaul, the field of Cae- 
sar's exploits, was in full process of Romanization 
as far as the Rhine. But the Germans who dwelt 
in the unknown forest region beyond the river 
were a constant menace to the peace of the em- 



184 



Outline History of Rome. 



pire. 




Livia Augusta. 



On the Rhenish frontier, accordingly, the 
Roman armies were concen- 
trated, and frequent raids were 
made across the stream, not so 
much for purposes of conquest as 
to deter the Germans from in- 
vading Gaul. These campaigns 
were conducted by Drusus and 
Tiberius, the sons of Livia, whom 
Augustus had married, and whom 
the Senate honored with the title 
of Augusta. Drusus died in 
Germany, but his brother estab- 
lished Roman authority in portions of Germany 
and Pannonia (Hungary), after a fierce struggle 
in which the Roman legions were often worsted 
and Italy itself panic-stricken with fear of invasion. 
The later wars of Augustus were conducted 
almost wholly by his lieutenants. His active life 
had begun at an early age, and his responsibilities 
weighed heavily upon his rather sickly constitu- 
tion. The last years of his life were clouded with 
trouble. The marvelous good fortune of his pub- 
lic life was awfully compensated by family ills. 
The emperor had no sons to succeed him. Drusus, 
the best of his step-sons, was dead. His daughter 
and granddaughter disgraced his name by their 
wickedness and were banished. His grandsons, 
Caius and Lucius, died in young manhood, leaving 
him only an idiot heir. It was whispered at Rome 
that Augusta was concerned in these untimely 



The Roman Empire. — I. 185 

deaths, and was exercising more than motherly 
solicitude for her own son, Tiberius, who lived 
now a prince at Rome, now a gentleman at Rhodes, 
now a general in the German camps, growing old 
in the uncertainty whether he or another should 
succeed Augustus. The emperor's domestic ills 
bred melancholy, which was deepened by a calam- 
ity which befell the State. In the year 9 B. C. 
Quintilius Varus, with three legions, was defeated 
in the Teutoburger Forest, in Germany, by a chief, 
Arminius, or Hermann, who has become the na- 
tional hero of the Germans. Varus was killed and 
his army massacred by the Germans, smarting 
from Roman aggression. Rome shuddered at 
the news. Again, as in the times of Brennus, 
Hannibal, the Cimbri and Teutones, the storm had 
come out of the north. Though past his seventieth 
year, weak in body and disturbed in mind, the em- 
peror prepared to punish the revolted Germans. 
But death came upon him before the task was 
done. He died peacefully at Nola, near Naples, in 
his seventy-sixth year, having been sole ruler of 
the civilized world for forty-four years (31 B. C- 
14 A. D.). 

During his life Augustus was considered some- 
thing more than a mortal. The decay of the an- 
cient religions of Rome and Greece had left men's 
minds in a strange and expectant attitude toward 
supernatural things. Some looked for a return of 
the old Saturnian times — the primitive golden age ; 
the Jews looked for a Messiah. In the East first, 



186 



Outline History of Rome. 



and afterward in western lands, there arose a 
strange veneration of the emperor. When he died 
the Senate publicly proclaimed him a god (divus), 
and shrines were built throughout the empire for 
his worship. At Ancyra, a town of the Galatians, 
was such a temple. On its walls was chiseled in 
Greek and Latin, for the world to read, the story 
of Augustus as he wrote it out himself. Not 
many years ago this record was re-discovered and 
published to the world. The emperor sets forth 
plainly and proudly the events of his reign, ig- 
noring one, the greatest. For in Bethlehem, an 
obscure village of his dominions, in the twenty- 
seventh year of his reign, the Lord Jesus Christ 
was born. 

There was no law to regulate the succession to 
the throne which Augustus had established so 

quietly that the Romans still 
thought and spoke of the 
republic as if it were yet in 
existence. As an adopted 
son Tiberius was, however, 
the emperor's legal heir. 
The main army was in 
Germany, under Tiberius's 
nephew, Germanicus, and 
at the news from Rome the 

soldiers ursred their leader to 
Tiberius. Second Emperor _ . _ , « , . 1(t 

(14-37 a. d.). claim the throne tor himself. 

He modestly declined in favor of Tiberius. The 

Senate bestowed upon the latter the same offices 




The Roman Empire. — I. 187 

which his step-father had held. He too became 
Caesar, Augustus, imperator, pontifex maximus, 
tribune, etc., and was indeed a monarch under 
republican disguise. Parts of the outgrown re- 
publican apparel were now discarded. The Comi- 
tia lost its dignity, and its rights of electing magis- 
trates and approving laws were transferred to the 
Senate. But the Senate gained little by the trans- 
fer, for it dared reject neither the laws nor the 
nominees of the emperor. The ruler's power was 
further increased by means of the laws against 
treason and by the organization of the Praetorian 
Guard. The laws placed it in the power of the 
sovereign to exile any person proved to be danger- 
ous to the State, the State being interpreted to 
mean the ruler. Informers (delatores) were paid 
to ferret out and accuse such political criminals, 
and the most trivial offenses were made the ground 
for action. The Praetorian Guard was a picked 
body of 6,000 men who were established in a per- 
manent camp just beyond the city wall. They 
were practically the garrison of the city, and 
later, as their numbers were increased, they, as 
the only armed force near the capital, set up 
and pulled down emperors themselves. This in- 
stitution was an outgrowth of the later years of 
Augustus. 

Augusta, the empress-mother, shared the chief 
power with her son until her death (29 A. D.), and 
seems to have been the abler ruler of the two. 
Under their joint direction Germanicus defeated 



188 



Outline History of Rome. 



Arminius the German, thereby gaining such favor 
with populace and soldiers that the government 
thought best to send him to Syria on a dangerous 
expedition, from which he never returned. Tibe- 
rius was past middle life at the death of Augustus, 
and age came rapidly upon him. After nine years 
of capable administration he allowed his favorite 
courtier, Sejanus, the commander of the praeto- 
rians, to govern for him. In 27 A. D. Tiberius 
withdrew from Rome to the Island of Capri, near 
Naples, where he wasted his life in disgraceful dis- 
sipation, while his favorite ruled the empire in his 
name. A rival brought news to Capri that Seja- 
nus was plotting to displace his master and pro- 
claim himself emperor. At the command of Ti- 
berius the favorite was seized and executed, and 
another minion, Macro, installed in his stead. The 
miserable existence of Tiberius was terminated in 

37 A. D. by death. He, too, 
was given divine honors by 
the servile Senate. It was 
under a magistrate of Tibe- 
rius, Pontius Pilate, governor 
of Judaea, that Jesus Christ 
was crucified (30 A. D.) for 
proclaiming himself King of 
the Jews. 

Tiberius appointed Ger- 
manicus's son Caius and his 
own grandson as joint heirs 
of his property and power. But Caius had the 




Caligula. Third Emperor 
(37-41 A. D.). 



The Roman Empike. — I. 



189 



favor of the praetorians and of the people, and the 
Senate could only ratify their choice. Caius 
Caesar Germanicus is known to history as Caligula 
("Bootkins"), the name by which his father's sol- 
diers called him when, as the baby of the legion, 
he toddled about the camps in his soldier-suit. 
He was a willful and weak-headed tyrant, vexing 
the State with extravagant and insane undertak- 
ings, and corrupting society by his gross immoral- 
ities. He claimed to be a god, and required wor- 
ship of his subjects ; he built a bridge of boats 
across a bay that he- might "walk upon the 
Avaters ; " he led his legions to the " conquest of 
the ocean," bidding them gather 
sea-shells as spoils of victory. 
After bearing with his mad 
whims for four years two of his 
officers stabbed him to death in 
a theater (41 A. D.). 

Caligula was a young man at 
his death, and left no heir. The 
Senate seized the opportunity to 
re-assert its own supremacy, and 

Undertook to conduct the gOV- Claudius. Four 

ernment without an emperor 
But the Senate reckoned without the new element 
— that Praetorian Guard which Augustus and Ti- 
berius had formed for the support of the ruler. 
The praetorians found Caligula's uncle, Tiberius 
Claudius Nero, hiding in the palace, dragged him 
to the camp, and hailed him as imperator. The 



$Bw* 



i&f"<gr 




Em- 
peror (41-54 A. D.). 



190 



Outline History of Rome. 



Senate yielded, not daring to oppose the only 
armed force in Italy. During his nephew's life- 
time this Claudius, who was deformed in body and 
of unsound mind, was the sport of the emperor 
and his court. The Emperor Claudius had but 
little to do with the actual business of the govern- 
ment, his low-born favorites in the palace exerting 
a controlling influence upon all his acts. Pallas, 
his steward, and Narcissus, his secretary, were the 
real authors of his policy, and they used their in- 
fluence to enrich themselves by the shameless sale 
of offices and privileges. Felix, who trembled be- 
fore his prisoner, St. Paul, was another of Clau- 
dius's wicked parasites. So long as the emperor's 
purse was full and his mind entertained with shows 
and plays he did not meddle with their deeds. 
Weak, wicked, and foolish as he was himself, 
Claudius is most notorious for the wives that shared 

his throne and surpassed his 
misdeeds. Messalina, his 
first empress, was so utterly 
bad that her name has 
passed into current lan- 
guage as a synonym of fem- 
inine licentiousness. She 
was unfaithful to her hus- 
band and murdered her 
rivals and her enemies. 
Narcissus at last gained 
the emperor's consent to have her killed. Agrip- 
pina, his niece and second wife, w T as scarcely an 




Messalina. 



The Roman Empire. — I. 



191 




Agrippma. 



improvement. Though she 
did not flaunt her immorali- 
ties in public, like Messalina, 
she was quite as unscrupulous 
and thoroughly bad. Clau- 
dius had two children by Mes- 
salina, Britannicus and Octa- 
via ; but Agrippina persuaded 
him to adopt her own son, 
Nero, for whom she coveted 
the throne. Nero was mar- 
ried to Octavia, and Britan- 
nicus was shoved aside in the bestowal of favors. 
When her plans were ripe the empress poisoned her 
husband (54 A. D.). The reign of Claudius 
yielded but few events of public importance. The 
conquest of Britain was undertaken and the 
southern portion formed into a province. In gen- 
eral the empire was quiet and prosperous. " The 
empire is peace w became a proverb, and it is prob- 
ably true that, although the 
personal iniquities, persecu- 
tions, and extortions of Tibe- 
rius, Caligula, and Claudius 
were heavily felt in Rome 
and Italy, the great part of 
the empire was well-governed, 
and Roman law and the Latin 
language were extended ev- 
ery-where about the Mediter- 
ranean. 







s?^ 



Nero. Fifth Emperor 
(54-68 A. D.). 



192 



Outline History of Rome. 



Agrippina succeeded in seating her son Nero 
in the chair of the Caesars. Burrhus, the com- 
mander of the Praetorian Guard, was on her side, 
and the Senate and the friends of Britannicus 
yielded with enforced grace. It was several years be- 
fore the character of the young ruler became known. 
His mother for a time directed the affairs of State 
and left him to his school-masters, and to the mu- 
sic and drama in which he especially delighted. 
Augustus had been a conscientious ruler, Tiberiiis's 
reign had been darkened by the horrors of its 
closing years, Caligula and Claudius were quite 
incapable of government, and charitable observ- 
ers excuse their grievous blunders on the plea of 
insanity. But for Nero, the last of the five Julian 
emperors, no such excuse can be made. His guard- 
ians, the honest soldier Burrhus and the philoso- 
pher Seneca, did their best to 
prepare him for his duties. 
The young man delighted in 
music, painting, poetry, and the 
drama. In fact, he cared more 
V^ for the stage than for the State. 
He acted in the public theaters 
and compelled dignified sena- 
tors to degrade themselves to 
the same level. No favorite 
was strong enough to control 
this emperor. His cruelty was boundless. He 
pushed aside his old teachers and had his own 
mother murdered^ his half-brother, Britannicus, 




The Roman Empire. — L 



193 




poisoned, and his wife, Octavia, disgraced. His 
second wife, the beautiful j^^^^^liX 

Poppsea Sabina, died from, a /\ ^ " y^JllJ I \ 
kick which he gave her in 
an angry fit. In 64 A. D. 
a great fire swept for six 
days through the most 
crowded portions of Rome. 
Men said — how truly we 
cannot tell — that the flames 
had been spread by the em- 
peror's orders, and that he Poppa3a SaMna - 
viewed the scene from his palace roof, fiddling 
merrily and reciting Homer's description of the 
burning of ancient Troy. Such rumors were un- 
comfortable, and the generally disliked and dis- 
trusted Christians were accused of the incendiar- 
ism. Thus arose the first persecution of the Chris- 
tians (64 A. D.), upon which Nero lavished his 
artistic cruelty in devising new modes of torture 
and execution. The burnt district was claimed as 
public property and laid out on a magnificent 
scale with parks, gardens, and public build- 
ing. On his own new palace, the " Golden House," 
he expended the revenues of a kingdom. Such 
extravagance and such cruelty were unheard of. 
The provinces suffered from the taxes necessary to 
supply the emperor's purse, and the empire was 
depleted of its greatest men to satisfy his fierce 
and suspicious moods. Burrhus and Seneca, the 
guides of his youjth, Lucan, the poet, Paetus, the 
13 



194 



Outline Histoky of Rome. 



noblest of the senators, Corbulo, the greatest of 
his generals, met death at his orders. Conspira- 
cies began to gather at Rome to rid the realm of 
this monster of crime. Vindex, a Gaulish chief- 
tain, roused his countrymen against the Roman 
misrule. At the same time Sul- 
picius Galba, the Roman gov- 
ernor of Spain, was hailed as 
imperator by his soldiers, and 
set out for Rome. Nero had 
no troops with which to defend 
himself, for his praetorians 
were sick of him and refused 
to obey his orders. He fled 
from his palace to the home of 
one of his former slaves. The 
Senate boldly declared him an 
outlaw and set a price upon the Caesar's head. At 
the news he killed himself (68 A. D.). With the 
death of Nero expired the Julian line of emper- 
ors — the descendants by adoption of the family of 
Julius Caesar and Augustus. The names Augustus 
and Caesar became titles, which each Roman em- 
peror bore without respect to his family connection. 
The next twelve rulers of Rome may be divided, 
for convenience of memory, into four triads : 
Three legionary emperors, three Flavian emper- 
ors, three statesmen, and three Antonines. 

The three legionary emperors, Galba, Otho, and 
Vitellius, owed their elevation to the soldiers. 
Galba was proclaimed emperor by his troops in 




Galba 



Sixth Emperor 
" A. D.). 



The Roman Empire. — I. 195 

Spain, and with them marched to Rome. Nero 
was dead and the servile Senate conferred the 
imperial offices and honors upon Galba. The new 





Otho. Seventh Em- Vitellius. Eighth Em- 

peror (69 A. D.). peror (69 A. D.). 

emperor was seventy-three years old, and com- 
pletely under the rule of unprincipled favorites. 
Otho, a senator, and former boon companion of 
Nero in his wild dissipations, conspired against him 
and won the favor of the praetorians. The aged 
emperor attached a young noble, Piso, to himself 
as colleague; but this could not save him. The 
guards proclaimed Otho emperor and killed both 
Galba and his colleague (69 A. D.). There were 
other legions than those in Spain and other popu- 
lar men than Galba and Otho. The Roman army 
on the Rhine marched to Italy to place its leader, 
the drunken and gluttonous Vitellius, in Caesar's 
seat. Otho was an incompetent general, but the 
praetorians were faithful to him ; the legions on 
the Danube and those in Syria under Vespasian 
were also loyal. If they could reach Italy in 



196 



Outline History of Rome. 



time he might be safe. But the army of Vitel- 
lius was the first to pass the Alps. Otho's miser- 
able force of praetorians, marines and gladiators 
was routed at Cremona, and the emperor of a few 
months took his own life. Vitellius allowed his 
legions to plunder and outrage as they pleased on 
the southward march to the capital. In Rome 
the unhesitating Senate honored this red-faced 
reveler with the dignity of Augustus. It is to 
the honor of Rome that this man — the worst of 
her rulers — remained in power but a few months. 
From the Danube and the East came the succors 
which Otho had summoned. Antonius, with the 
vanguard, defeated the generals of Vitellius and 
captured Rome. The dissolute emperor was 
dragged from a dog-kennel, his hiding-place, and 
roughly slain. The reigns of these three legionary 
emperors, Galba, Otho, and Vitellius, aggregate 
but a little more than a single year (68-69 A. D.). 

Vespasian — Titus Flavius 
Vespasianus was his full name 
— had no better title to the 
throne than had the three 
legionaries who preceded him. 
There was no Julian blood in 
his veins, nor had he been 
adopted into the imperial 
family. His ancestry was ob- 
scure. Some said his great- 
grandfather w^as a farm hand. 
Surely his father was a tax-gatherer or something 




Vespasian. 
Ninth Emperor (69-79 A.D.). 



The Roman Empire. — I. 197 

of that sort. In Nero's reign Vespasian had 
served with credit in the army and as a capable 
provincial governor, but he had none of the court- 
ier's graces, even falling asleep at the theater 
while the emperor acted on the stage, and was 
no favorite with the conceited monarch. The 
terrible revolt of the Jews (66 A. D.) called for 
Rome's best general, and Vespasian was sent to 
Judaea to re-conquer the country. He took with 
him his elder son, Titus, leaving behind him at 
Rome his brother Sabinus and his younger son, 
Domitian. The Judaean war was prolonged by 
the stubborn resistance of Jerusalem, and Vespa- 
sian was still in Syria when the news of the usur- 
pations of Galba, Otho, and Vitellius reached 
him. His son, his friends, and his soldiers pressed 
him to claim the empire for himself. He yielded, 
and went to Rome, which the troops of Antonius 
had already captured in his name. The Gauls 
and Germans had risen in insurrection under 
Civilis, but Vespasian's General, Cerealis, subdued 
the dangerous rising (71 A. D.). Titus, who had 
been left in Judaea, brought the three years' siege 
of Jerusalem to an end (70 A. D.). The Romans 
were exasperated by the rigors of this war; and 
the Jews fought madly after their walls were 
scaled. The city was given over to pillage, burn- 
ings, and slaughter ; blood ran in the streets, the 
magnificent temple was destroyed so that not one 
stone was left upon another. Never was prophecy 
more strikingly fulfilled than in this destruction of 



198 Outline History of Rome. 

Jerusalem. In his splendid triumphal procession 
at Rome Titus exhibited the spoils of the temple — 
the golden candlestick and the sacred vessels, 
and a representation of these may still be seen 
carved upon the Arch of Titus at Rome which 
commemorates the fall of the Jewish capital. 

Vespasian was a good emperor. In contrast to 
the Julian line, he was simple in taste, mild in 
temper, frugal in his habits of life. His econ- 
omies and new means of raising revenue re-filled 
the empty treasury. Men said that he loved 
money too well; but his money was honestly 
gained and wisely expended for the improvement 
of the city. He died in the tenth year of his reign 
(79 A. D.), after a long and honorably-spent life. 
Titus, the second of the Flavian family, suc- 

^ ceeded to his father's place. In- 

X deed, during Vespasian's life- 
{( A time this energetic son had been 
admitted to a large share in the 
Government. To his liberal 
policy are due some of the 
finest monuments of Roman 
architecture which have sur- 
vived. The Arch of Titus 

Titus. Tenth Em- stands almost intact. The enor- 
peror (79-81 a. D.). moug F]avian Amphitheater, 

where gladiatorial shows were given to please 
the populace, is the greatest of ancient ruins. The 
colossal statue which adorned this building gave 
it the name Colosseum by which we know it. The 




The Roman Empire. — I. 199 

massive strength of the building inspired the 
lines : 

" While stands the Colosseum Rome shall stand ; 
When falls the Colosseum Rome shall fall ; 
And when Rome falls — the world 1 " 

Titus ruled the empire alone for only two years 
(79-81 A. D.), but he gained the affection of his 
subjects and was sincerely mourned at his death. 
The reign is notable for a great fire at Rome, a 
devastating plague in Italy, and a series of earth- 
quakes in Campania, followed by the most famous 
disaster in history — the eruption of Vesuvius (79 
A. D.). For hundreds of years the volcano had 
been inactive. The cities of Pompeii and Hercu- 
laneum nestled at its foot, and were favorite 
places of resort for wealthy Romans. Suddenly 
the volcanic forces in the mountain were let loose. 
Ashes and molten stones poured from the crater 
and fell upon the country round. The inhabitants 
of Pompeii and Herculaneum fled with what haste 
they could. Many were struck 
down by cinders, suffocated by 
gases, or imprisoned forever in 
the houses and temples where 
they sought shelter. The 
younger Pliny, who witnessed 
the scene from a ship in the 
Bay of Naples, gives a graphic 
description of its wonders in 
his famous letters. His uncle, 
Pliny the Elder, the famous Pliny , the younger. 




200 



Outline History of Rome. 




Domitian. Eleventh 
Emperor ( 81-96 A. D.). 



naturalist, went ashore to study the phenomenon; 
but his devotion to science cost him his life. 
Vespasian and Titus were well advanced in life 
when they came to power, and 
the elevation did not make 
their hard heads dizzy. Domi- 
tian was only a boy when the 
good fortune of his father, 
Vespasian, made him an em- 
peror's son. During the reigns 
of his father and brother the 
wild young prince was kept in 
check ; to cover his real char- 
acter he assumed the cloak of 
idiocy, filling the mouths of 
the gossips with stories of his fly-killing exploits. 
He came to the throne in 81 A. D. For a few 
years his rule was just and gentle, like that of the 
other Flavians, but his personal cowardice in 
the wars which he undertook led to conspiracies 
against him, and his costly and fruitless campaigns 
emptied his coffers. To protect himself and to 
replenish his treasury he exerted all his despotic 
power. His murders and his confiscations were 
as numerous and as unprovoked as those of the 
worst of his predecessors. He trusted no one, and 
those philosophers and Christians whose theory of 
life raised them above the fear of death were ob- 
jects of his especial dread. Such he cruelly per- 
secuted. His own wickedness and his failure as a 
soldier made him jealous of the good and brave. 



The Roman Empire. — I. 



201 



SH^; 



Agricola, who had conquered the greater part of 
Britain, was a notable victim of his distrust. 
Members of his own household were not above 
his suspicion. Even his wife discovered that he 
had determined upon her death. But she fore- 
stalled his purpose and had him murdered in his 
palace (96 A. D.). Agricola's conquest of Britain 
is the sole glory of his reign. Elsewhere the 
Roman armies were defeated, 
and on the Danube they had 
to buy peace of the Dacians 
by a yearly tribute to their 
king, Decebalus. 

The commander of the Prae- 
torian Guard was an accom- 
plice of the empress in the 
assassination of Domitian, and 
helped to select the new em- 
peror. The choice of the 
guard fell upon Marcus 
Cocceius Nerva, a senator of 
high character but small dis- 
tinction. Nerva was accepted by the Senate and 
the citizens, and signalized his rule by trying to 
undo the wicked acts of the former reign. He 
repealed the laws concerning treason, which had 
been so abused that no wealthy citizen had been 
safe from the greed or malice of the informers; 
the political outlaws of the Flavian times were 
recalled, and the burdensome taxes which had 
been imposed by Vespasian and his successors to 




Nerva. Twelfth Em- 
peror (96-98 A. D.)- 



202 



Outline History of Rome. 






\ 



•v 



pay for wars and public works were reduced. 
Nerva died after sixteen months of power (96-98 
A. D.)— long enough to give him place in the triad 
of "statesmen emperors." 

The wisest act of the Emperor Nerva was his 
selection of Marcus Ulpius Trajanus to succeed 

him. Trajan, as he is known 
to history, was the first 
Caesar who was not Italian 
by birth — a fact significant 
of the decay of the old Ro- 
man exclusiveness. No man 
could have been better fitted 
for the task of government. 
A soldier of eminent abili- 
ties, he was able to preserve 
order within the empire, to 
protect its frontiers, and 
even to extend its bound- 
aries. As a statesman he was liberal and prudent, 
and while greatly adorning the capital his care 
extended to every province of the empire. He 
was born in Spain, and it may be that this fact 
led him to value the provinces as highly as the 
capital. Trajan was with the army in Germany 
when his young relative, Hadrian, brought him 
the news of his selection by Nerva. For a year 
he made no haste to return to the city, although 
by his letters to the Senate he accepted the im- 
perial dignity at Nerva's death. He entered 
Rome quietly, with his wife Plotina, like a private 



\ 



/ 




Trajan. Thirteenth 
Emperor (98-117 A. D.). 



The Roman Empire. — I. 203 

citizen, dwelt in frugality and simplicity in a 
plain house, and saved his income to expend it for 
public objects. The revenues of the empire were 
laid out in improvements which benefited all 
parts of the domain. The city itself was fur- 
nished with an abundant supply of pure water, 
which was brought from the distant hills, not in 
subterranean pipes, but along lofty aqueducts of 
stone. The theater was enlarged and remodeled 
for the comfort of the people. Artificial harbors 
were built near the mouth of the Tiber and at 
Ancona, on the east coast of the peninsula. Pro- 
vision was made for the State support of poor or- 
phans, and for similar purposes, which indicates 
the ruler's enlightened policy and his real interest 
in the welfare of his people. 

The conspicuous statesmanship of this famous 
emperor was surpassed by his qualities as a sol- 
dier. Roman armies had won few laurels since 
the time of Augustus. In Domitian's reign they 
had suffered ignominious defeat. The Dacian 
king, Decebalus, dwelling in the mountainous re- 
gion north of the Danube, now comprised in Aus- 
tria-Hungary and Roumania, compelled the Ro- 
mans to purchase peace with annual tribute 
money (90 A. D.). Trajan discontinued these hu- 
miliating payments, and the consequent dissatisfac- 
tion led to war. In 101 A. D. the Roman army, led 
by the emperor in person, crossed the Danube by 
a bridge of boats, penetrated the mountains (the 
Transylvanian Alps) and took the strongholds of 



204 Outline History of Rome. 

the king. He promised submission and made 
peace (102 A. D.). 

Three years later the war was renewed. Trajan 
built a massive bridge of stone near the point 
where the Danube breaks through the mountains 
(the Iron Gate). Thence by several routes his 
armies converged upon the Dacian forces. This 
time Trajan's conquest was thorough. Decebalus 
killed himself in the moment of defeat (107 A. D.), 
and his kingdom became a Roman province. 
Roads were built across its plains and through its 
mountain passes ; Roman colonies were planted on 
its city sites, and the customs, the language, in- 
deed the very name of Rome were impressed upon 
the conquered nation; for to this day the people 
of Dacia call themselves " Romanians," and their 
speech is clearly akin to the Romance tongues of 
Italy, Spain, and France. 

On his return from Dacia the emperor cele- 
brated a splendid triumph w^ith the grandest 
gladiatorial games that the spectacle-loving popu- 
lace had yet witnessed. As a monument of vic- 
tory he began the erection of his forum. This 
was a grand public square, entered through a tri- 
umphal arch and inclosed by marble colonnades. 
Within it rose the famous column of Trajan, one 
hundred and twenty-eight feet in height. It was 
built of great blocks of marble, whose surface was 
thickly crowded with a sculptured panorama of 
the Dacian war. Above all was a splendid statue 
of the imperator. The column stands yet in its 



The Roman Empire. — I. 205 

old place, the sculptures still fresh upon its sur- 
face; but the effigy of St. Paul has displaced the 
heathen emperor upon its summit. 

The warlike emperor spent little time in his 
house, The camp was his home, and he 
found little delight elsewhere. The activity 
of his generals in Syria brought on a war with 
the once dreaded Parthians (113 A. D.), and 
again Trajan took personal command of his army. 
The Parthians were no longer the untamed race 
which they were two centuries before. The em- 
peror met but weak resistance from them. He 
marched farther eastward than any Roman gen- 
eral had yet been. He visited the ruins of Nin- 
eveh, the old cities of Babylon and Susa, and 
reached the waters of the Persian Gulf. On his 
return his body yielded to the stress of long and 
arduous labors, and at Selinus, in Cilicia, he 
breathed his last (117 A. D.), naming as his suc- 
cessor, in almost his latest breath, that Hadrian 
who, twenty years before, had hurried to his camp 
in Gaul with the news of his own selection. 

Publius iElius Hadrianus — the Emperor Ha- 
drian of history — proved himself a worthy succes- 
sor of Trajan. His policy was a proper sequel to 
that of his predecessor. Trajan had advanced the 
limits of the empire to their widest extent; Ha- 
drian took measures to secure the empire in its 
possessions. He recognized that the defense of the 
eastern lands which the Roman armies had lately 
traversed would be a killing burden, and he ac- 




206 Outline History of Rome. 

cordingly abandoned the conquests beyond the 
Euphrates river. Although no warrior Hadrian 
was in Rome as little as Trajan had been. His 

years were passed in ceaseless 
journeyings from province to 
province of his empire, direct- 
ing improvements, superin- 
tending the defenses, and 
stimulating the arts and sci- 
ences. From Gaul he crossed 
to Britain, where only one 
emperor, Claudius, had pre- 
ceded him. Here he pursued 

Hadrian. Fourteenth his defensive policy by build- 
Emperor (1 17-138 A. DJ. . ^ 4. • i J. i 

mg the triple rampart known 
as " Hadrian's Wall " across the island to protect 
the Roman province from the savage Picts and 
Scots of the Caledonian highlands. In remote 
parts of the empire have been found inscriptions 
commemorating Hadrian's sojourn. 

Like Alexander, he visited the ruins of ancient 
Troy; the name of his wife is carved upon the 
singing statue of Memnon in Egypt; an engraved 
Algerian tablet shows that Africa was not neg- 
lected. In Greece the emperor lingered with es- 
pecial fondness. His love for the fine arts found 
gratification there and aroused a sentimental af- 
fection for Athens which Rome, his birthplace 
and capital, could not inspire. He loved to adorn 
the old Hellenic city with new buildings, and un- 
der his patronage a new quarter, the City of Ha- 



The Roman Empike. — I. 207 

drian, was added to the historic town. Curiosity 
led him to pry into all religions and philosophies 
with which his journey ings brought him in con- 
tact, and he was generally tolerant of all. It is 
worthy of remark that he decreed divine honors 
to a young shepherd, Antinous, who loved him 
and died in his service. 

Other emperors had adorned Rome with pal- 
aces; Hadrian left his tomb as his monument in 
the city and built his palace in the country, at 
Tivoli, where in the grounds about this famous 
villa were represented the most famous scenes 
of which the poets and historians had written. 

Two events of the reign deserve especial men- 
tion: the codification of the laws and the dis- 
persion of the Jews. The Roman praetors in 
every country acted as judges in the law-courts, 
and the body of decisions accumulating through 
the course of several centuries was now collected 
by an eminent lawyer, arranged in systematic 
shape, and published as "Hadrian's perpetual 
edict," to guide the decisions of future magis- 
trates. 

After the wars of Titus the Jews still looked 
for their Messiah. Many false prophets came, 
raised the standard of brief revolt and perished 
under the Roman sword. In 132 A. D. a new 
prophet, Bar Cochba, roused his Hebrew country- 
men to another hopeless struggle. Hadrian had 
countermanded a law of Moses, and had deter- 
mined to plant a Roman city, bearing his own 



208 



Outline History op Rome. 



name, upon the site of the ruined city of David. 
It was hopeless for the Jews to struggle against 
Rome, but it took the best general in the empire 
three years to put them down. Half a million 
Jews were killed in the rebellion, and the nation 
was made a wanderer on the face of the earth. 

Toward the close of his life Hadrian became 
suspicious of those around him. JElius Verus, 
whom he had adopted as his successor, himself 
preceded the emperor to the grave. His second 
choice fell upon Titus Aurelius Antoninus. In 
138 A. D. the emperor died, and his ashes were 
laid in the great mausoleum which he had built at 
Rome on the right bank of the Tiber, and which 
may still be seen, massive and strong, where, as the 
castle of St. Angelo, it dominates the papal city. 

Antoninus remained by Hadrian's bedside to 
soothe the last hours of his delirium, and then re- 
turned to Rome and ac- 
cepted the imperial honors 
from the Senate. For 
Hadrian, the cruelties of 
whose last months had 
almost obliterated the rec- 
ord of his many years of 
moderation, the new em- 
peror secured the divinity 
which the Senate would 
have withheld. For him- 
self he asked nothing but 

Antoninus Pius. Fifteenth -an&\xrnA rnnnh " A nmi c. 
Emperor (138-161 A. D.). leceiveQ mucn. AUgUS- 



Z<$ftO* 




The Roman Empire. — I. 209 

tus " and " Caesar " he was by long-established 
custom; but he must have treasured above all his 
titles the name of " Pius," which meant at once 
" the kind, the gentle, the devoted." History re- 
lates little of the life and reign of Antoninus Pius. 
Few emperors reigned so long, none left so brief 
a chronicle. The empire was at peace; the Da- 
cians turned at times upon their conquerors, and 
the Jews, where they could gather, struck a blow 
for their despised race, but no dangerous war 
ruffled the composure of the realm. The emperor 
dwelt at Rome without pomp or display. He did 
his duty by his family and by his subjects. The 
Senate was treated with consideration, the legions 
had no ground of complaint, the praetorians lay 
quietly in camp without the gates. The great 
public works begun by Hadrian were completed. 
In Gaul, the family home of the emperor, great 
buildings were erected at his charge. The em- 
pire prospered, and foreign kings and envoys 
flocked to Rome to lay their disputes before a 
judge so wise, so just, as the " first of the Anto- 
nines." In Rome, or at his country-seat inEtruria, 
he divided his attention between the public in- 
terests and the education of the boys, Marcus 
Aurelius and Lucius Verus, whom Hadrian had 
recommended to his care. The former lad grew 
up after his adoptive father's own heart, and 
when the old man died (161 A. D.) succeeded to 
the throne. 

When only a little boy the manners of Marcus 
14 



210 



Outline History of Rome. 




Aurelius had caught the fancy of the Emperor Ha- 
drian. JElius Verus, the emperor's colleague, had 
* adopted 1dm, and later at Ha- 

drian's wish Antoninus Pius 
selected him as his successor. 
Thus the boy had the benefit 
of royal favor from childhood 
up. His tastes were schol- 
arly, and his teachers — anions 
them the rhetorician Fronto 
and the philosopher Rusticus 
— were worthy of their pupil. 
At the age of ei^ht years 
Marcus Aurelius. sixteenth the little prince was made a 

Emperor (161-1*0 A. D.). ^^ q{ j^ ^ fifteen fae 

was for a time governor or prefect of the city of 
Rome; but such premature honors did not turn 
his mind from study. His teachers and his own 
thought led him to adopt the stoic philosophy as 
the guide of his life — the noblest creed that the 
Greeks had formulated. He was a tender and 
affectionate father, a wise and liberal sovereign. 
In Marcus Aurelius monarchy vindicated itself, 
for the one man who was raised above his fellows 
as a law-giver was the one man best fitted for the 
elevation. 

For eight years (161-169 A. D.) Marcus Aure- 
lius and his adopted brother, Lucius Verus, occu- 
pied the throne together, but the incapacity of 
the latter has made him sink out of history as his 
dissipations hastened him out of the world. The 



The Roman Empire. — I. 211 

conduct of a war of defense against the Parthians 
(162-165 A. D.) fell to Verus and his abler lieu- 
tenants. The latter won victories for which the 
pleasure-loving emperor claimed the honor of a 
triumph, though he had reveled at Antioch while 
the legions were contending with the foes of 
Rome. While Verus was in the East Marcus Au- 
relius conducted the affairs of the empire with 
great ability. The Senate, which, under some of 
his predecessors had been deprived of all share in 
the government, was restored to much of its re- 
publican authority. The emperor guided, but did 
not dictate, its legislation. From the days 
of the Gracchi the State had recognized its 
obligation to contribute to the support of the citi- 
zens. Doles of grain had been granted, with few 
exceptions, almost continually since that time. 
Further provision was made for the support of 
the people of Italy, who grew poorer and less 
numerous as their worn-out lands were deserted 
for more favored parts of the empire. These 
measures of relief and charity were extended by 
the Antonines, and under Marcus Aurelius officers 
were appointed in all parts of Italy to guard 
against famine by proper distribution of the for- 
eign supply of grain. 

But there was little peace for the peace-loving 
emperor. The empire was surrounded by enemies 
like a treasure-house beset by robbers. It had 
gathered within its boundaries all the civilized na- 
tions of the earth (save those of remote and un- 



212 Outline History of Rome. 

known Asia) and had thrust prosperity and civil- 
ization upon Spain, Gaul, and Britain. Within 
these boundaries dwelt many races, peaceful and 
happy; beyond the wall of Hadrian, the Rhine 
and the Danube, were millions of men as strong 
in body and as brave in spirit as any who lived 
under Roman law. They had reached varying 
degrees of civilization, but were all included by 
the haughty Romans under the general name 
barbarians. These races inhabited the whole of 
central and northern Europe, and the sight of the 
rich Roman provinces was ever tempting them 
across the boundaries in quest of plunder or of 
permanent abodes. By fortresses, by unbridged 
rivers, by walls, as in Britain and in Germany be- 
tween the Rhine and Danube, Rome endeavored 
to protect her treasures; but it was beyond her 
power to garrison and guard a thousand miles of 
frontier from an ever watchful foe. In the reign 
of Marcus Aurelius the peril of her position was 
impressed upon her by frequent incursions from 
the north. From 166 A. D. to 180 A. D. the 
emperor was almost continually in the camp 
of the legions, beating back the tide of Ger- 
man invasion that threatened Italy. The devas- 
tating plague which the Eastern army brought to 
the peninsula on their return carried off his col- 
league Verus (169 A. D.) and left Marcus Aure- 
lius the sole Caesar. Of his wars on the Danube 
there is not much to record. The chastisement of 
one fierce tribe had no deterrent effect upon its 



The Roman Empire. — I. 213 

neighbors, and the northland swarmed with un- 
conquered nations ready to replace the fallen. 
Some were beaten to submission, others were paci- 
fied by bribes, but such arrangements. could be only 
temporary; the final reckoning between Rome and 
the barbarians was deferred until a later century. 
In the midst of his warfare the great emperor 
was taken from the world by a fever. He died at 
Vienna in the year 180 A. D. 

Among the noblest and purest of heathen writ- 
ings is the book of Meditations, in which this im- 
perial philosopher wrote down his thoughts con- 
cerning life. Although great and good in his 
rule, and faithful to his duty as he saw it, Marcus 
Aurelius was the author of a bitter persecution of 
the Christians. This " Jewish sect," as the Ro- 
mans called it, was unpopular because it declined 
to worship the deified emperors and refused to join 
in the State festivals, which were invariably cele- 
brated in the name of a heathen god. Nero was 
the first of the persecuting emperors, but the sec- 
ond persecution was one of Domitian's crimes. 
Trajan and Hadrian, in their zeal for good gov- 
ernment, harried thousands of Christians to death. 
Among those who suffered martyrdom under 
Marcus Aurelius was Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, 
the friend and companion of St. John the Evan- 
gelist. The growth of Christianity may be 
judged from the fact that the twelfth legion of 
the Roman army in 1 75 A. D. was almost entirely 
composed of Christians. 




214 Outline History of Rome. 

The descent from Vespasian to Domitian was 
not so great as from Marcus Aurelius to his degen- 
^^~ erate son, Commodus, who 

^^y/^^Vl succeeded to the throne at 

W f^i^'h his father's death. He aban- 

W- vf~ y }^j) doned the care of the fron- 

E^-^i ) f ti er to n i s officers and pur- 

\$7^ } J/ \ chased peace where he could, 

^' j/ j^^^V ^ or ne P re ^ erre( i tne luxury 
of the capital to the hard- 
ships of tent and saddle. 
commodus. seventeenth This last of the Antonines — 

Emperor (180-192 A. DJ. ag we may ^ j^ thmgh 

several of his successors took the name of Anto- 
ninus, in memory of the great men who had right- 
fully borne it — was cruel and suspicious. He 
feared the Senate which his father and the Fla- 
vians had respected, and its members became again 
the prey of his informers. The Christians went 
unscathed through this reign, possibly because the 
emperor was generally lax in his enforcement of 
law, or it may be on account of the influence which 
individual Christians gained in the palace. The 
disgraceful public exhibitions in which Nero dis- 
played his artistic skill before the populace were 
outdone by Commodus. The latter was the more 
genuine Roman. Nero strove for eminence in the 
gentle arts of the Greeks ; Commodus sought 
and gained distinction in the bloody games of 
Rome. He won seven hundred and fifty gladia- 
torial contests — no great marvel, perhaps, for what 



The Roman Empire. — I. 



215 



poor slave would dare to flesh his sword upon a 
royal combatant ? Lions, tigers, and elephants 
were brought to Rome that he might " hunt " them 
in the amphitheater, and he claimed the honor of 
slaying one hundred lions with one hundred ar- 
rows. Like Domitian, he was slain (192 A. D.) by 
the men and women of his own household, who 
feared his cruel temper. 

So ended the seventeenth Caesar, the last of our 
four triads. 




Ovid. 



Outline History of Home, 



CHAPTER VIII. 

TH I RD PERIOD (Continued). 

The Roman Empire. 

Part II (284 years, 192-476 A. D.). 

FROM THE DEATH OF COMMODUS TO THE FALL 05 
THE WESTERN EMPIRE. 

At the death of Commodus the Roman Empire 
was still intact. The barbarians had been beaten 
or bought, and although their attacks were inces- 
sant and grievous to bear no Roman territory had 
yet been relinquished. Another fact is noticeable: 
although the armies on the frontier had more than 
once asserted and established the right of their 
own leaders to rule the empire they had not en- 
deavored to break off fragments of the empire in 
order to erect them into kingdoms. In the era 
which now opens the armies became almost the 
sole source of imperial power. The times of the 
" legionary emperors " were re-enacted, and while 
these frequent and violent changes of government 
and constant civil wars sapped the military 
strength of the State the barbarians on the north 
increased the pressure of their advance. Thus 



The Roman Empire. — II. 



21 



weakness within and dangers without threatened 
the collapse of the structure. 

The conspirators who had killed Commodus 
were ready with a man to fill his place. They 
chose a prominent member of the Senate, Perti- 
nax, who might have proved himself an able ruler 
had not the opposition of the Praetorian Guard put 
an end to his reign three months after its begin- 




&v-*to 






xy~: 



%^Mi 








Pertinax. Eighteenth Emperor 
(193 A. D.). 



Septimius Severus. 

Twentieth Emperor 

(193-211 A. D.). 



ning. The guards then offered the imperial hon- 
ors to the highest bidder, and another senator, 
Didius Julianus, was the purchaser. The price is 
said to have been the payment of $1,000 to each 
soldier. But the praetorians were not strong 
enough to deliver the goods that they had 
sold. The army in Illyria was more numerous 
and better led, and now proclaimed as emperor 
one of its own officers, Septimius Severus. The 
armies in Gaul and the east, mindful of Vespa- 



218 



Outline History of Rome. 



sian's victories, likewise undertook to place their 
commanders on the throne of the Caesars. With a 
directness and energy suggesting the military 
genius of Julius Caesar, Septimius first marched 
upon Rome. Abandoned by his purchased guards, 
Didius Julianus was captured and put to death. 
The praetorians were banished from Italy, and a 
new Praetorian Guard of 50,000 veterans was 
formed to protect the emperor's person and capi- 
tal. Having taken these precautions in Italy 
Severus turned upon his competitors. The east- 
ern army was met and destroyed in Asia, and the 
western found no better fate in Gaul. Thus freed 
from rivalry the master of the empire led his le- 
gions to the ever-perilous frontier. In Parthia, at 
one end of the line, and in Britain, in the farthest 
west, he conducted successful campaigns. At 
York, in Northern Britain, his life and long reign 
ended, 211 A. D. 

Septimius Severus left his throne jointly to hi9 

two miserable sons, Bassi- 
anus and Geta. The former 
was nicknamed "Caracalla" 
from the hooded great-coat 
which the Gauls called by 
that name and for which 
the emperor set the style at 
Rome. He soon became sole 
\S^~^^ W ^ Caesar, having slain his 
brother by his own hand, 
^"or ( 2 T nS fl w Em " Although Caracalla belongs 






>^<, 



^c^SL. 




The Roman Empire. — II. 219 

in the list of the most infamous of the Roman 
emperors his reign is more memorable than that 
of the good Antoninus. The public baths with 
which he adorned the city of Rome were more ex- 
tensive than those of Titus, and their ruins may 
still be seen. The money which was needed for 
this immense structure, for retaining the favor of 
the praetorians, and for paying the border garri- 
sons, was obtained from the provinces by gross 
exactions. In order to extend the range of his 
tax collections the emperor extended the privileges 
— and the burdens — of Roman citizenship to all 
the free inhabitants of the empire, thus removing 
the last civil barrier between the mother-city and 
her children. The wars of his time were inglori- 
ous, and his own military ability was inconspic- 
uous. One of his own soldiers was his murderer 
(217 A. D.). 

For nearly one hundred years from the time of 
Caracalla the empire went on from bad to worse. 
Fully twenty emperors gained the throne within 
that century, commonly winning and keeping their 
honors by no other right than the might of their 
legions. Among this score were men of every 
grade of strength. Some may be passed in si- 
lence, others gained a horrid prominence by their 
misdeeds ; still others showed themselves worthy 
of the purple. Elagabalus (218-222 A. D.), the 
twenty-second Caesar, was the worst. He was a 
priest of the Syrian sun-worship, and was foisted 
upon the Romans by the eastern army. After 



220 



Outline History op Rome, 




four years of shameful living the praetorians put 
him to death. Alexander Severus, his successor 

(222-235 A. D.), ranks among 
the best of the emperors. The 
great lawyers Ulpian and Ju- 
lius Paullus continued a work 
which Papinian had begun 
in the reign of Septimius Se- 
verus, namely, the systematic 
arrangement or codification 
of Roman law. Under Alex- 
ander the empire was well 
defended ; wars were waged 
against the Persians, who had 

Alexander Severus. Twenty- now displaced the Parthians 
third Emperor (222-235 A .Dl). ^ the ^ enemieg of Rome 

in Asia, and against the invincible German tribes 
which ever refused to accept the Rhine as the 
boundary of the empire and resisted all attempts 
to Romanize their own land. The otherwise 
insignificant emperor Philip (244-249 A. D.) 
borrows a certain importance from the thou- 
sandth anniversary of the city, which was cel- 
ebrated at Rome with extravagant splendor on 
April 21, 248 A. D. Under his successor, De- 
cius (249-251 A. D.), was inaugurated a famous 
persecution of the long suffering Christian Church. 
Most of the emperors of this age fell in battle or 
were murdered by their soldiers. Valerian (253- 
260 A. D.) was taken alive by the Persians, whose 
king used his living body for a horse-block and 



The Roman Empire. — II. 221 

after death had his skin stuffed in the likeness 
of life. After Valerian's reign claimants to the 
purple appeared in every land. Nineteen impera- 
tors were proclaimed by the legions and strove 
among themselves for the supremacy. The " Age 
of the Thirty Tyrants " is the name by which this 
period goes. Such anarchy invited the Germans to 
fresh attacks. They came into Italy through the 
passes of the Alps and were well advanced on the 
road to the capital when Aurelian (emperor 270- 
275 A. D.) drove them back. For the better pro- 
tection of Rome this ruler built a new wall about 
the capital. It was ominous of the growing peril 
that the imperial city could no longer depend upon 
its armies to hold the barbarians in check. There 
had been no need of a city wall since the time of 
Hannibal except in the civil wars. This emperor, 
called the " Restorer of the Universe," wisely 
abandoned Dacia — Trajan's conquest — whose ex- 
posed position beyond the Danube rendered it in- 
capable of defense against the Goths who poured 
continually upon it from the north-east. The 
Syrian queen, Zenobia, of Palmyra, was conquered 
by this brilliant general and statesman and taken 
to Rome to grace his triumph. 

Five emperors appeared in quick succession 
after Aurelian's murder, fighting each other for 
the throne and leading the legions against the on- 
coming barbarians, when it was won. In 284 A. D. 
a greater figure stepped out from the file of Roman 
rulers and took rank as a reformer and a general. 




222 Outline History of Rome. 

This was Diocletian. He was of humble birth, 
had won his military command bv merit, and 

gained the imperatorship by 
the aid of his soldiers. As 
soon as his own position as 
Augustus was assured he vol- 
untarily divided his honors 
with another commander, 
Maximian, who was also made 
Augustus. These two empe- 
rors of equal rank divided the 
Diocletian. Forty-second empire, Diocletian taking the 

Emperor ,284-305 A. D.). east? ^^ ^ caphal ^ jjj. 

comedia, in Bithynia (Asia Minor), and Maximian 
establishing his head-quarters at Mediolanum (the 
modern Milan). In 293 A. D. the directing mind 
of Diocletian further elaborated his plan for the 
better government of so vast an empire. Each 
Augustus must now adopt a Caesar as his succes- 
sor and give him immediate, though not equal, 
partnership in the Government. Accordingly two 
Cresars, Constantius and Galerius, were appointed, 
and the superintendence of the Roman world was 
quartered among these co-operating rulers. The 
four men were harmonious, and during their joint 
reign the empire was ably governed. Toward its 
close (303 A. D.) began the last and greatest per- 
secution to which the Christians were ever sub- 
jected. The victims of death and torture num- 
bered hundreds of thousands. The believers were 
outlawed, their public and private possessions 



The Roman Empire. — II. 223 

were taken from them, and every means was de- 
vised to exterminate the sect. Roman coins of 
Diocletian and Maximian have been found which 
commemorate the " annihilation of the Christians." 
In 305 A. D. the two Augusti retired to private 
life and the two Caesars were raised to the full 
rank of Augustus. New Caesars were created, but 
confusion followed. The ambition of individuals 
disordered Diocletian's scheme for a co-operative 
sovereignty. Constantine, the son of the Caesar 
Constantius, assumed the title of Augustus, and 
the western army supported him in the assump- 
tion. Others followed his example until at one 
time there were six generals claiming the title of 
Augustus. Constantine was an energetic com- 
mander. Beginning in Britain, he fought his way 
to Rome, overturning his rivals and in 323 A. D. 
making himself sole ruler of the Roman Empire. 
It was in this campaign for the mastery that he 
saw the historic vision. A cross flamed out in the 
heavens as he marched, and beneath it the words 
" In Hoc Signo Vinces " — " By this sign shalt 
thou conquer." From that time the emperor 
bore the cross upon his standard, and until the 
fall of the empire this Christian symbol took the 
place of the heathen eagle which Marius had made 
the emblem of the Roman legions. The so-called 
conversion of Constantine the Great ended the per- 
secution and raised the despised Christian faith to 
high honor. In 325 A. D. the emperor in person 
opened the first general council of the Christian 



224 Outline History of Rome. 

Church at Nicsea (Nice), in Bithynia. Three hun- 
dred and eighteen bishops met in the palace and 
for two months considered the interests of the 
Church. They indorsed the Athanasian theory of 
Christ's divinity, denouncing the Arian heresy, 
adopted the Nicene Creed, fixed the date of the 
Easter celebration, and published twenty rules or 
canons for the guidance of the early Church. 

The edict which decreed equal rights to the 
Christians is enough to distinguish the reign of 
Constantine from those of his predecessors; but 
another act has immortalized his name. In 330 
A. D. he removed the seat of government from the 
West to the East. Rome on the Tiber lost the 
eminence which it had been achieving for eleven 
hundred years, and a new Rome was founded on 
the Bosphorus, where the Greek city of Byzantium 
had stood for ages. The new capital soon received 
the name Constantinople — the city of Constantine. 
Byzantium had been destroyed in a recent war, 
and on its ruined site the emperor marked out the 
plan of his proposed Christian capital. As Peter 
the Great in after times compelled the Russian 
boyars to leave their ancestral homes in Moscow 
and build a city of palaces in the marshes of St. 
Petersburg, so Constantine compelled rich Romans 
to settle in Constantinople. His eastern subjects 
gladly gathered there, and the city was soon wor- 
thy of a place of imperial residence. 

The reasons for the abandonment of Rome were 
various. Constantine had determined to re-organ- 



The Roman Empire. — II. 225 

ize the Government so as to make of it an absolute 
despotism. The emperor was no longer to be con- 
sidered the elected magistrate of a free people, and 
the Senate was to have no check upon him. Ac- 
cordingly, Rome, with its consuls and tribunes, 
was left to itself, the Senate without authority, 
the consuls with only the government of the city 
in its hands. The empire was divided into four 
prefectures, of which Constantine appointed the 
governors. Furthermore these were so subdivided 
that the emperor was directly represented in every 
part of his dominions by an officer responsible to 
him alone. The armies were similarly subdivided 
in order to lessen the possibility of a grand revolt 
or an insurrection in favor of a popular commander. 
The emperor's choice was, perhaps, directed to 
Byzantium because that situation was in the center 
of the richest and most civilized part of the em- 
pire and was easily capable of defense. The nat- 
ural and artificial walls which inclosed Italy were 
weakening before the persistent onset of the bar- 
barians, and Rome must inevitably fall. What- 
ever may have been the ground for the transfer of 
the sovereignty, events have proved its wisdom. 
Before the close of the next century a barbarian 
chief was ruler of the city on the Tiber, but the 
city of Constantine remained the seat of a Roman 
emperor for another thousand years. 

Having established with such stability as he 
could the despotism which he had planned, Con~ 
stantine divided the realm among the members of 
15 




226 Outline History of Rome. 

his family. After his death (337 A. D.) his three 
sons fought among themselves until 361 A. D., 
when his nephew, Julian, gained 

/i^^m^^k t ^ ie so * e P ower - He was a brave 
soldier and a man of enlightened 
intellect, but his attitude toward 
the Christian Church gained for 
him the title of "Apostate," and 
has made him an object of de- 
testation. He rejected the faith 
of his uncle and endeavored to 
revive the worship of the old gods 
/ortT^igh^Empe^ of Greece and Rome, The effigy 
(361-363 a. d.). of Jupiter displaced the mono- 
gram of Christ on the legionary standards, and 
daily sacrifice was offered in the imperial camp. 
His own reverence for the ancient beliefs was 
doubtless sincere, but the old stories had long since 
lost their hold upon the human mind, and his elab- 
orate attempts to galvanize them into life showed 
their utter dissolution. Even the books which the 
apostate emperor wrote with zealous pen in order 
to combat the Christian fathers are now, bv the 
irony of time, reckoned among the best historic 
evidences of the truth of the Christian storv. After 

m 

Julian's death (363 A. D.) Christianity returned 
to the empire to stay. The histories of the time 
are full of the details of the long struggle between 
the creeds. For a long time the gods remained in 
the Roman temples, and the Roman Senate de- 
creed the divinity of the deceased Augusti. Great 



The Roman Empire. — II. 227 

calamities which befell the State were laid at the 
door of the Christians, and the impending dan- 
gers of barbarian invasion were variously inter- 
preted according to the commentator's point of 
view. The pagan saw in it the visitation of Jupi- 
ter's wrath upon his people for following the new 
faith, and the Christians declared that it was the 
deserved punishment of Rome for her persistent 
attachment to her idols. Gradually the temples 
fell into neglect and Christian churches rose in 
the cities of the empire. St. Sophia, at Constan- 
tinople, was one of the first and finest. The cities 
were first Christianized, but the old faiths lingered 
long among the simple country people, the dwellers 
in the pag% " country," or on the haiden, " plains," 
and so the words "pagans " and "heathen " came 
to mean the unbelievers. Missionaries carried the 
Gospel across the borders of the empire to the 
barbarian tribes. The Goths had the Bible in 
their own language in the fourth century after 
Christ, and many of them as well as many of the 
other German races accepted Christianity before 
they came to dwell within the limits of the empire. 
About the year 375 A. D. the restlessness of the 
barbarian tribes was redoubled. Behind the Ger- 
manic races which congregated on the Roman 
frontiers were other nations, of different blood, led 
on by some unexplained instinct — perhaps of plun- 
der, possibly of conquest. The Huns, a Turanian 
horde of blood-thirsty warriors, drove the milder 
West Goths (Visigoths) before them across the 



228 Outline History of Rome. 

Danube into Roman territory. Valens, the em- 
peror (364-378 A. D.), allowed the latter to remain, 
but af erward fell in battle with them. Theodosius 
(emperor 378-395 A. D.) had the same West Goths 
to contend with nearly all his life, and when he 
died he divided the empire between his two sons 
— Honorius in the West and Arcadius in the East. 
Stilicho, his best general, himself a barbarian of 
the Vandal nation, was made protector of the lads, 
and when Alaric, the King of the West Goths, 
ravaged the provinces of Macedonia and Greece 
he was the only man who could stay their progress. 
The eastern emperor made peace with Alaric, who 
then attempted the conquest of Italy. Stilicho, 
with the army of Honorius, beat him back repeat- 
edly (400-403 A. D.), but before he could settle 
with him another German horde, composed of Van- 
dals, Suevi, and Alani, pressed into Italy under the 
leadership of Radagaisus. Again the great Stil- 
icho summoned all the forces of the empire, strip- 
ping Britain, Gaul, and Spain, of their defenses. 
Radagaisus and his myriads were driven back, but 
the salvation of Italy was the loss of the western 
provinces. Britain was quickly overrun by the Cale- 
donian tribes, and later by the English (Angles and 
Saxons) from the German sea-coast. Roman man- 
ners soon disappeared from the island. Gaul was 
plundered by Franks and Burgundians, and Spain 
was occupied by the Vandals and Suevi, from 
whom Stilicho's prowess had snatched Rome in a 
moment of desperate danger. The weak Roman 



The Roman Empire. — II. 229 

Emperor, Honorius, jealous of the general who 
had twice saved Rome, had Stilicho assassinated. 
The news of his death roused Alaric to another 
invasion. The emperor shut himself up in his im- 
pregnable fortress of Ravenna, surrounded by the 
marshes of the Adriatic, and left the old capital 
to care for itself. The Gothic king advanced 
without opposition. No army could be gathered 
in the disordered empire. The slaves flocked to 
him; their masters dared not resist. For a costly 
ransom he spared the city (409 A. D.), but the 
next year he came again, and in August, in the 
year 410 A. D., Rome was plundered by the bar- 
barian West Goths of Alaric, as it had been sacked 
by their kindred, the barbarian Gauls of Brennus, 
just eight centuries previous. After twelve days 
in the city the king moved southward, dying on 
the march to Sicily. That no one might desecrate 
the conqueror's last resting-place a stream was 
turned aside for a few midnight hours and his 
body was laid in a grave under its waters. His 
successors, Athaulf and Wallia, made terms with 
the emperor, and with his sanction founded a West 
Gothic (Visigothic) kingdonon Spain and south- 
ern France, which lasted, with a few changes, for 
three centuries, until the Mohammedan Arabs 
from Africa conquered Spain (711 A. D.). 

Although Italy was still ruled by the emperor 
it was in a wretched condition, and the Western 
Empire had been shorn of its provinces, Britain, 
Gaul, and Spain. Africa was the next great loss. 



230 Outline History of Rome. 

The Vandals, who, as earlier tenants, shared the 
Spanish Peninsula with the Suevi and West Goths, 
took advantage of the civil war in the Roman 
province of Africa to cross the narrow seas with 
a powerful army and engage in the quarrel (429 A. 
D.). Their leader, Genseric, took the strong cities 
Hippo and Carthage, and the country which they 
defended. In the siege of Hippo died the patriotic 
and learned St. Augustine, the most eminent of 
the early "fathers" of the Christian Church. 
Genseric founded in Africa a Vandal kingdom 
which the Roman Emperor recognized as semi- 
independent. This Vandal State lasted a century 
and developed great naval power. Its swift ships, 
the forerunners of the Barbary pirate craft, were 
the terror of the western Mediterranean, whose 
islands, Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica, were early 
captured by Vandal hands. The roughness of 
these barbarians, their disrespect for art and liter- 
ature, has made the name of Vandal synonymous 
with " destroyer." In June, 455 A. D., their ruth- 
less raids reached Rome itself. What Alaric the 
Goth had left of the city's possessions was taken 
by Genseric the Vandal. But the incursion was 
soon over. The barbarians retired with their spoil, 
leaving Italy, plundered and helpless, the easy prey 
of the next German horde. 

In the middle of the fifth century the Huns, the 
fiercest of the barbarian tribes, appeared on the 
broken frontiers of the empire. They were a wild, 
rough race of Turanian origin, unlike the Germans 



The Roman Empire.— II. 231 

with whom Rome had thus far come in contact. 
Their strange faces and unfamiliar voices deep- 
ened the terror of the impression which they made. 
Panic preceded their advance, and desolation fol- 
lowed in their train. They came from the wide 
grassy plains of Russia, and their first blows were 
at the Eastern Empire. But Constantinople was too 
strong for them, and, content with tributes from 
its ruler, they turned their eyes to easier conquests 
farther west. Attila, their king, known as " the 
scourge of God," led a vast army through the 
German forests into Gaul. The Germans feared 
him as much as did the Romans, and from their 
settlements he gathered great quantities of booty. 
Aetius, the Roman general, massing all the avail- 
able forces of the Western Empire, defeated him 
near Chalons, in France (451 A. D.), in the "battle 
of nations." This glorious victory saved Western 
Europe from barbarism and preserved for modern 
times the civilization of the Greeks and Romans. 
Attila's power, though checked, was not destroyed. 
The next year he appeared in northern Italy with 
a great army. The people of the fortress of 
Aquileia fled before him and founded Venice on 
the Adriatic islets. The rich cities of the Po val- 
ley surrendered to him, and no force was at hand 
to bar the road to Rome. But the supplications 
of the citizens, their rich bribes, and perhaps the 
expected return of Aetius from Gaul altered the 
plans of the Huns. Rome was spared, and Attila, 
laden with booty, returned to his northern forests, 



232 Outline History of Rome. 

where he died (453 A. D.), without establishing a 
permanent kingdom. The Huns soon disappear 
from history. 

The Western Empire had now lost all its prov- 
inces, and its emperor was really subject to the 
Vandal and Visigothic kings, who were his nom- 
inal dependents. Ravenna had supplanted Rome 
as the capital, and the greatest man left to the 
former mistress of the world was not the heathen, 
Caesar, but the Christian bishop, or " pope." Rome 
had so long been recognized the sovereign city 
that it was natural for her spiritual head to be 
accorded the first place in Christendom. In 476 
A. D. the feeble line of Roman emperors came to an 
end with the boy- monarch, Romulus Augustulus, 
whom Odoacer, a German chief who had mastered 
Italy, removed from the throne. This marks the 
fall of the Western Empire. Odoacer was appointed 
"patrician " of Italy by the eastern emperor, Zeno, 
but seems to have conducted the government as it 
pleased him. The subject kingdoms in which the 
barbarian nations had settled soon denied all con- 
nection with the government in Italy and set up 
for themselves. From these independent king- 
doms sprang the nations of the Middle Ages, which 
still exist as the republics and monarchies of West- 
ern Europe. In a concluding chapter we shall trace 
in outline the course of the Eastern Empire to its 
fall in 1453 A. D, 



Conclusion. 233 



CHAPTER IX. 

CONCLUSION. 

The Eastern Empire to its Fall, 1453 A. D. 
The Holy Roman Empire 800-1806 A. D, 

The history of Rome properly ends with the 
overturn of the Western Empire by the Ger- 
man Odoacer in 476 A. D. From that time until 
the time of Charlemagne (768-814 A. D.) was a 
period of turmoil and constant changes in the ter- 
ritory once ruled from Rome. In northern Gaul 
the Frankish king Clovis (481-511 A. D.) de- 
feated Syagrius, the last Roman general in that 
region, and established a kingdom firmly with 
Paris as its capital. At his direction the Franks 
accepted Christianity. This was the German be- 
ginning of the French nation. 

In Italy, Odoacer was defeated by Theodoric 
(493-526 A. D.) king of the East Goths, who 
united also for a time the West Gothic Kingdom 
of Spain under his authority ; but after his death 
the union was dissolved. Spain continued under 
Gothic rule; but the Italian Kingdom soon yielded 
to two foes, Belisarius and the Lombards. The 
former was the general of Justinian, the Emperor 



234 Outline History of Rome. 

of the East (52 7-565 A. D.). He was one of the 
greatest of military leaders. So long as he lived 
the boundaries of the Eastern Empire were ably 
defended, and an attempt was made to regain the 
provinces which Rome had lost. The Vandal 
Kingdom in Northern Africa was swept up by the 
new wave of imperial conquest, and Italy was 
again included in the domains of the empire. 
But the Langobards (Lombards), a late arrival 
from the inexhaustible German forests, now came 
into Italy and established a Lombard kingdom on 
the ruins of the East Gothic, easily ridding them- 
selves of the representatives of the Greek Empire 
whom Belisarius had left in Italy to govern his 
conquests. By degrees all Italy became Lombard, 
and all the Lombards became Catholic Christians. 
Their kingdom was absorbed (774 A. D.) by Char- 
lemagne, King of the Franks. It was during their 
supremacy in Italy that the Pope of Rome, Greg- 
ory I., advanced to a position of supremacy among 
the bishops of the Church. 

So much for the barbarian kingdoms into which 
the West had fallen. Meanwhile how had the 
East been faring ? Constantinople had approved 
the wisdom of its founder. Wealth and popula- 
tion gravitated to it as their proper center. The 
splendid court which the emperors established 
there was the resort of the best minds of the Ori- 
ent. The language of the city was Greek, and 
in its libraries and museums were assembled the 
finest products of Greek art and literature. While 



Conclusion. 235 

the West was overrun by barbarian nations, igno- 
rant and half-civilized at best, the East continued 
to cultivate the learning of the ancients and the 
Christian doctrines of more recent origin. Thus 
the city of Constantine escaped the dark ages 
through which Europe passed before the renas- 
cence of Greek ideas. Although the Eastern Em- 
pire was comparatively safe from the inroads of 
the German nations, it was exposed to the wild 
forces which the advent of the warrior-prophet 
Mohammed let loose in Arabia in the seventh cent- 
ury. We have already seen how Belisarius won 
back Italy for Justinian, and how much of this 
re-conquest was lost to the Lombards. After Jus- 
tinian's death the limits of the empire shrank still 
more. A few districts in Italy, the Balkan penin- 
sula and Asia Minor obeyed the ruler at Constan- 
tinople; but that was all. The successors of Mo- 
hammed, the prophet, beginning in Arabia, con- 
quered all the lands on the southern shore of the 
Mediterranean — Syria, Persia, Egypt, Africa. Al- 
most all these Arab gains were losses to the Greek 
Empire. The imperial possessions in Europe were 
at the same time fading away before the Slavonic 
races, and the Turanian Bulgars and Magyars 
who fastened upon the Balkan peninsula and oc- 
cupied Macedonia and Greece in the seventh and 
eighth centuries. Gradually the lines closed in 
upon the new Rome of Constantine. The Turks, 
more cruel and less enlightened, took up the Ara- 
bian career of conquest in the tenth century, and 



236 Outline History of Rome. 

wrested the greater part of Asia Minor from the 
Greeks. Their cruelties to the Christians of the 
East brought on the Crusades, those seven wonder- 
ful wars of the cross, in which the kings and 
knights of Western Europe engaged during the 
eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries. 
Thanks to the German, French, and English sol- 
diers, the Turks were kept too busy, for three hun- 
dred years, to complete the reduction of Constanti- 
nople, still the seat of empire. 

With the end of the Crusades came a new peril. 
The Ottomans, a fresher and fiercer Mongol race 
than their predecessors, came into Asia Minor 
from the far East and swept all before them. 
Passing by Constantinople for the time being, 
they crossed into Europe and conquered the Slavs 
of the Balkan peninsula. The sudden irruption 
of Tamerlane and four hundred thousand Tartars 
from Central Asia saved Europe for half a cent- 
ury. The Turks and Tartars tried conclusions in 
Asia Minor, and the latter won. But Tamerlane's 
power did not survive his death. The Ottomans 
soon recovered strength and again pressed upon 
Constantinople. The emperor begged the West- 
ern princes to assist him, pleading the cause 
of Christ against the Mohammedan; but the 
Christian Church had long since split in two. The 
Church of Rome denounced the Greek Church as 
heretical, and all efforts to reunite the two divis- 
ions failed. Constantinople was left unaided ex- 
cept by a few thousands of Venetians and Genoese. 



Conclusion. 237 

These few defenders held out for two months 
against the besiegers, but on the 29th of May, 
1453 A. D., the city fell. Constantine XII., 
the last of the Eastern emperors, was killed in the 
final onslaught. The fall of the city of Constan- 
tine brought down with it the last vestige of the 
Eastern Empire. From that day until this the 
splendid city on the Bosphorus has been the capi- 
tal of the degraded Turks. 

Thus we have traced the course of the united em- 
pire to its division, 395 A. D., and the divided em- 
pires to their respective dissolutions (476 A. D. 
and 1453 A. D.). Here this history would nat- 
urally close were it not thought well to trace in 
outline the origin and existence of the " Holy 
Roman Empire;" a peculiar revival of the first 
empire by the Germans, which lasted, in name, at 
least, until the beginning of our own century. 

The German kingdom of the Franks which 
Clovis founded (486 A. D.) was destined to per- 
form a leading part in the later history of Europe. 
Its kings, or the ministers who governed for them, 
were generally able men, eager for conquest and 
fierce in battle. They extended the Frankish rule 
over a part of Germany and over almost the 
whole of what is now the French Republic. In 
the battle of Tours (732 A. D.) their general, 
Charles Martel, turned back the Arab conquerors 
of Spain, who had threatened to spread the Mo- 
hammedan religion over Western Europe. The 
Frankish king, Charles the Great (Charlemagne or 



238 Outline History of Rome. 

Karl der Grosse), one of the ablest monarchs that 
ever lived, led the Franks to brilliant conquests. 
The whole of France, Belgium, Switzerland, and 
the Netherlands, Eastern Germany, and Austria, 
and the Lombard kingdom in Italy, were brought 
under his immediate control. He was a Roman 
Catholic, and exerted himself to protect the inter- 
ests of the Church. 

On Christmas Day, in the year 800 A. D., the 
Roman Pope, Leo III., solemnly crowned this 
German king as Emperor of Rome. There had 
been no emperor in Italy since 476 A. D., nor any 
imperial authority save that which was weakly 
exerted from Constantinople; but Charlemagne 
assumed the style of Caesar [Kaiser in the German 
form), and left the imperial title to his successors. 
His descendants, who divided his possessions by 
the treaty of Verdun (843 A. D.), were the real 
founders of the French and German nations, for 
the separation of the Franks exposed the eastern 
wing of that German race to the Latin influences 
which were strong in Gaul since the time of 
Julius Caesar. Here the West Franks became 
Latinized, and the French language took shape 
out of the old Germa i and Latin elements. On 
the other hand, the East Franks, on the right bank 
of the Rhine, which had never been thoroughly 
subject to Rome, clung to their early speech — the 
German — and still retain it. The Angles and 
Saxons who crossed to Britain also retained their 
Germanic language, driving out the Romanized 



Conclusion. 239 

Britons. In Spain and Itaty the Goths, Lombards 
and other Germanic tribes yielded to Roman in- 
fluences and lost their own language in the Span- 
ish and Italian, which are akin to French, and are 
classed with it as the Romance or Latinic tongue. 
The Holy Roman Empire, which Charlemagne 
founded was revived by Otho the Great (962 
A. D.), and continued to exist in title for a thou- 
sand years. The emperors were German kings 
who went to Rome only to receive the blessing of 
the pope. As Rome had ruled the world, so in 
theory the whole of Christendom formed one em- 
pire of many kingdoms, over which the German 
emperor and the Roman pope were jointly sover- 
eign. In practice, however, the emperor had lit- 
tle authority outside of his especial dominions, 
which were usually limited to Germany. The 
kingdoms, Spain, France, and England, were in- 
dependent of the emperor, and frequently more 
powerful than he. In the fifteenth century the 
succession to the imperial throne became fixed in 
the family of Hapsburg, the dukes of Austria. 
Under them the empire declined. It was a con- 
glomeration of self-governing principalities, 
duchies, kingdoms, and counties, without unity of 
feeling and incapable of concerted action. Single 
States, like Austria, Bohemia, and Prussia, achieved 
a certain prominence, but the Holy Roman Empire 
was a lifeless thing. Under the pressure of Na- 
poleon it fell in pieces. The Archduke of Aus- 
tria retained the empty title of Kaiser (Caesar) 



240 



Outline History of Rome. 



until August 6, 1806, when he abandoned the 
name and empty authority of Roman Emperor and 
assumed the new style " Emperor of the Heredi- 
tary Austrian Estates.'" The Holy Roman Empire 
has never been revived. It never was " Roman " 
except in name. 




Domi tius Corbulo. 



PRONUNCIATION OF PROPER NAMES AND LATIN 

WORDS. 



A-cbse'an (-ke'). 

A-cha'i-a (-ka/). 

Ac'ti-um. 

Ad'du-a. 

A'di-ge (a/de-ja). 

A-dri-at'ic. 

JE'dile. 

^E-ge'an (-jeO- 

M-zu'sse. . „ , 

^ai-a Cap-i-to-li'na. 

,E-mil'i-us. 

iE-mil-i-a'nus. 

j9E-ne'as. 

JS'qui. 

A-e'ti-us. 

.fflt'na (EtO. 

^E-to'li-an. 

A-fra/ni-us. 

Af-ri-ca/nus. 

A'ger pub'li-cus. 

A-gric'o-la. 

Ag-ri-gen'tum (-jen' 1 

Ag-rip'pa. 

Ag-rip-pi'na. 

A-ha'la. 

A-hen-o-bar'bus. 

Al'a-ric. 

Al'ba Lon'ga. 

Al-ex-an'der. 

A-lex-an'dri-a. 

Al-ee'ri-a (-je r ). 

Al'li-a. 

Al-lob'ro-ges (jes). 

Am-i-ter'num. 

A-mu'li-us. 

An-co'na. 

An'cus Mar'ti-us. 

An-cy'ra (-si'). 

A'ni-o. 

An-tin'o-ous. 

An'ti-och (-ok). 

An-ti'o-cbus (kus). 

An'ti-um. 

An-to-ni'nus Pi'us. 

An-to'ni-us. 

An'to-mnes. 

Ap'en-nines. 

Ap'pi-us Clau'di-us. 

A'quae Sex'ti-ae. 

Aq-ui-le'i-a. 

Ar'ab. 

A-ra'bi-an. 

Ar-che'la-us (-ke-). 

Ar-min'i-us. 

A-ri'ci-a. 

A-rim'i-num. 

16 



Ar'nus. 

Ar-pi'num. 

Ar-re'ti-um. 

Ar'sa. 

Ar'si-a. 

Ar'yan. 

As'cu-lum. 

A-si-at'ic (-she-). 

A-thaulF. 

Ath'ens. 

Atb/e-sis. 

A-til'i-us. 

At'ti-ca. 

At/ti-la. 

Au'fi-dus. 

Au-giis'ta Tau-rin-6'rum 

Au-gus'ti-lis. 

Au-gus'tine. 

Au-giis'tu-lus. 

Au-gus'tus. 

Au-re'li-us. 

Au-re'li-an. 

Av'en-tine. 

Bab'y-lon. 

Baj'a-zet. 

Bal-kan'. 

Ba'i-se. 

Bar'ca. 

Bar Coch'bar (Cok'). 

Bas-si-a'nus. 

Bel'gi-um (ji). 

Bel-i-sa'ri-us. 

Ben-e-ven'tum. 

Bi-thyn'i-a. 

Bo-ad-i-ce'a. 

Bee o'ti-a (Be-6'she-a). 

Bo-he'mi'a. 

Bo-no'ni-a. 

Bos'pho-rus. 

Bo-vi-a'num. 

Bren'nus. 

Brit-tan'i-cus. 

Brun-dis'i-um. 

Bru'tus. 

Brut'ti-um. 

Bur'rhus. 

By-zan'tine. 

By-z an'ti-um. 

Cse'li-an (SeO. 
Cse're (SeO- 
Cse'sar (Se'zar). 
Ca'i-us 
Ca-la'bri-a. 
Cal-e-do'ni-a. 



Ca-hg'u-la. r % 

Ca-mil'ius. [ya). 

Cam-pagn'a (Kam-pan'« 

C tm-pa'ni-a. 

Cam'pus. 

Ca'naan. 

Can'nae. 

Can-u-le'i-an. 

Ca-nu'si-um. 

Ca'to. 

Cap'it-o-line. 

Ca'pri (pre). 

Ca-put u 

Car-a-cal'la. 

Car'bo. 

Ca-ri'nae. 

Car'rhae. 

Carthage. 

Car-tha-sun'i-an (-jin'). 

Cas'pi-an. 

Cas'si-us. 

Cas'tor. 

Cat'a-na. 

Cat-i-li'na. 

Cat-i-lin-a'ri-an. 

Cat' Mine. 

Ca-tuKlus. 

fat'u-Ius. 

Cau'ca-sus. 

Cau'dine. 

Cau'di-um. 

Celts (Selts). 

Cel-ti-be'ri-an (Sel). 

Cen-tu-ri-a/ta (Sen). 

Ce-re-a'lis(Se-). 

Ce'res(Se'). 

Chaer-o-nae'a (KeV-). 

Cha-lons' (Sha-lon').„ 

Char-le-magne' (Shar- 

le-man'). 
Ci'ce-ro (Sis). 
Ci-lic'i-a (Si-). 
Cil'ni-us (SilO. 
Cim'ber (Sim'). 
Cim'bri (Sim'). 
Cin cin-na'tus (Sin-). 
Cis-al-pi'na (Sis-). 
Cis-al'pine (Sis-). 
Ci-vi'lis (Si-). 
Clau'di-us. 
Cle-o-pa'tra. 
Clo-a'ca. 
Clo'di-us. 
Clo'vis. 
Clu'si-um. 
Cne'i-us (Ne'yiis). 



242 



Pronunciation, Etc. 



Coc-ce'i-us ( se'). 

Co'cles. 

Co-los-se'um. 

Co-mi'ti-a. 

Co-mi'ti-ura. 

C6m / mo-dus. 

Con'stan-tine. 

Con-stan' ti-us. 

Con-stan-ti-no 'pie. 

Cor'bu-lo. 

Cor'do-va. 

Cor-fin'I-um. 

Corinth. 

Co-ri-o-la'nus. 

Cor-ne'li-a. 

Cor-ne'li-us. 

Cor'si-ca. 

Cras'sus. 

Crem'e-ra. 

Cre-mo'na. 

Crete. 

Cro'ton. 

Cu'mae. 

Cu-mae'an. 

Cunc-ta'tor. 

Cu'res. 

Cu-ri-a'ta. 

Cu'ri-ae. 

Cu-ri-a/ti-i. 

Cu'ri-o. 

Cu'ruie. 

Cy-nos-ceph'a-lae (Sy-). 

Pa'ci-a (-she-a). 

Dan'ube. 

Da-ri'us. 

^e-ceb'a-lus (-seb'). 

De-cem'virs (-sem'). 

Dec'i-mus (DeV) 

De'ci-us (sbi-). 

De-la-to'res. 

Del'phi. 

De-mos'the-nes. 

Den-ta'tus. 

Di-a'lis. 

Did'i-us. 

Di-o-cle'ti-an. 

Di-o-ny'sus. 

Dol-a-bel'la. 

Do-mi'ti-an. 

Do-mi'ti-us. 

Drep'a-num. 

Dvu'sus. 

Du-il'i-us 

Dyr-ra/chi-um (ki-). 

F c'no-mus. 

El-a-gab'a lus. 

El'ba. 

E-&3'ri-a (jeO. 

E-pT'rus. 

Eq'ui-Tes. 

Eq'ui-tum. 

Es'qui-line. 

E-tru'ri-a. 

E-trus'can. 

Eu-phra/tes. 

Eu-rym'e-don. 



Eux'ine. 
Ex-arch'ate (ark'). 

Fa'bi-an. 

Fa/bi-us. 

Fas'ces (Fas'seez). 

Fe'lix. 

Fe-ti-a'les. 

Fi-de'nse. 

Flac'cus. 

Fl a/men. 

Flam-i-ni'nus. 

Fla-min'i-us. 

Fla'vi-an. 

Fla/vi-us. 

Fo'rum. 

Fre-sel'lae. 

Fren-ta'ni. 

Fren'to. 

Fron-to. 

Ga-bin'i-sn. 

Gal-a'ti-an. 

Gal'ba. 

Ga-lti'ri-us. 

Gallic. 

Ga'vi-us. 

Gen'o-a (JenO. 

Gen'o-ese. 

Gens (Jenz). 

Gen'ser-ic (Jen'). 

Ger-man'ic (JeiO. 

Ger-man'i-cus. 

Ge'ta (JeO. 

Glad'i-a'tor. 

Glau'cl-a. 

Goths. 

Gothic. 

Grac'chi (k!\ 

Grac'chus (kus). 

Gre'ci-an. 

Ha/dri-an. 

Ha-mil'car. 

Han'ni-bal. 

Ha-rvis'pice. 

Has'dru-bal. 

Hel-le'nes. 

Hel-len'ic. 

Her-a-cle'a. 

Her-cu-la'ne-um. 

Hermann. 

FTer'ni-ci (si). 

Hl'e-ro. 

Hi-e-ron'y-mus. 

Ho-no'ri-us. 

Ho-ra'ti-i. 

Ho-ra/ti-us. 

Hor-ten'si-an. 

I-a-pye/i-an (pij'). 
I-be'rus. 
iri-ad. 
Il-lyr'i-an. 
In'do-Eu-ro-pe'an. 
In'ter-re-ges (-jez). 
I o'ni-an. 
I&th'mi-an. 



It-al'i-an. 
It-al'i-ca. 
It'-a-ly. 

Ja-nic'u-lum. 

Ja/nus. 

Je-ru'sa-lem, 

Ju-dae'a. 

Ju-gur'tha. 

Ju-gur'thine. 

Ju'li-an. 

Ju-li-a/nus. 

Ju'li-us. 

Ju'ni-us. 

Ju'no. 

Ju'pi-ter. 

Jus-tin'i-an. 

K.ai'ser. 

La-bi-e'nus. 

La'res. 

Lat'in. 

La/ti-um. 

La-vin/i-um. 

Leg'horn 

Lep'i-dus. 

Leu-cop'e-tra. 

Lib'y-an. 

Li-cii/i-us (sin'). 

Li-gu'ria. 

Lil-y-bse'um. 

Li]> a-rae. 

LT'ris. 

Liv'i-a. 

Liv'i-us. 

LiVy. 

Lo'cri. 

Lom'bard-y. 

Lu'ca. 

Lu'can. 

Lu-ca'ni-a. 

Lu'ce-res (se-). 

Lu-cre'ti-a. 

Lu-cul'lus. 

Lu'cu-mo. 

Lu-si-ta'ni-a. 

Lu ta/ti-us. 

Mac'e-don (MasO- 
Mac-e-do'ni-a (Mas) 
Ma/cra. 
Ma/cro. 

MaB-ce'nas. 

Mae'li-us. 

Ma-gis'ter Eq'ui-tum 

<-gis'.) 
Mag'na Grae'ci-a. 
M^g'ne'si-a. 
Mag'nus. 
Ala -go. 

Mal'ta (Mawl'). 
Ma-mTi-a. 
Ma-niKi-us. 
Man1i-U8. 
Man'tu-a. 
Mar-ceKlus. 
Mar'cus. 
Ma'ri-us. 



Pronunciation^ Etc. 



243 



Ma'ro. 
Mar'sT. 

Mar'ti-us 
Mar-teP. 

Mas-si-nis'sa. 

Max-eu'ti-us. 

Max-Im'i-an. 

Max'i-min. 

Max'i-nius 

Me-di-o-la'num. 

Med-i-ter-ra/ue-an. 

Mem'mi-us. 

Mem'non. 

Mes-sa-li'na. 

Mes-sa/na. 

Mes-sPna (-se r ). 

Met-a-pon'tum. 

Me-tau'i us. 

Me-tel'lus, 

MiPan. 

MI'lo. 

Min'ci-us. 

Mi-ner'va. 

Min-tur'nae. 

Mi-se'num. 

Mith-ri-da'tes. 

Mith-ri-dat'ic. 

Mo-ham'med. 

Mon'gol. 

Moris Sa'cer (ser). 

Mu'ci-us. 

Mum'mi-us. 

Mun'da. 

Muni-clp'i-a (sipO 

Mn-tl'na. 

My'.ae. 

Na'-ples (plz). 

Nar-cis'sus (sis') 

Nar'ni-a. 

Nar'ses. 

Na/so. 

Ne-ap'o-lis. 

Nep'tune. 

Ne'ro. 

Ner'va. 

Neth'er-lands. 

Nice. 

Ni-cse'a (se). 

Nie'buhr (Ne'boor). 

Nin'e-veh 

No'Ia. 

Nor-ba'nus. 

Nu-man'ti-a. 

Nu'rna Pom-piPi-us, 

Nu-mid'i-a. 

Nu'mi-tor. 

Oc-ta-vi-a'nus. 

Oc-ta'vi-a. 

O-do'a-cer (ser) 

O-guPni-an. 

Op'ti-mates. 

Or-ch6m / e-nus (komO. 

Os'can. 

Os'man. 

Os'ti-a. 

Qs'tro-goth. 



O'tho. 
Ot/to-man. 
Ov'id. 
O-vid'i-us. 

Pa'dus. 

Pae-lig'ni. 

Paes'tum. 

Pse'tus. 

PaPa-tine. 

Pal-a-tPnus. 

Pa-le-oPo-gus. 

PaPes-tine. 

Pal-mv'ra. 

Pan-n6'ni-a. 

Pa-nor'mus. 

Pa/ii-an. 

Par'thi-an. 

Pa-tri'ci-an (-tnsh'yan). 

Pa-ta/vi-um, 

Pa-vPa (-veO- 

PePo-pon-ne'sus. 

Pe-na'tes. 

Per'ga-mon. 

Per'i-cles. 

Per'se-us. 

Per'ti-nax. 

Pe-ru'si-a. 

Pe-tre'i-us. 

Phar-na'ces. 

Phar-sa'lus. 

Phce-ni'ci-a. 

Phi-Hp'pi. 

Phi-Hp'pic. 

PPcene (seen). 

Pi-cj'num (si /). 

Pic'tor. 

Pi-rae'us. 

PI'so. 

Pla-cen'ti-a (-sen'). 

Plau'ti-a Pa-pir'i-an. 

Ple-be'i-an. 

Plm'i-us. 

Plin'y. 

Plo-ti'na. 

PoPlux. 

Pom-pe'i-an. 

Pom-pe'i-I (avc). 

Pom-pe'i-i (pa'yee,rao<aO 

Pom-pe'i-us. 

Pom'pey. 

Pon'tf fex. 

Pon-tiPi-ces. 

Pon'ti-us. 

Pon'tus. 

Pop-pae'a Sa-bPna. 

Por'ci-us, 

Por'sena. 

Prae-nes'te. 

Pras'tor. 

Prae-to'ri-an. 

Pris'cus. 

Pro-per'ti-us. 

PtoPe-my (T6P). 

Pub-lic'o-la. 

Pub-HPi-an. 

Pub'li-us. 

Pu'nic. 



Pyd'na. 

Pyr'eu-ees. 

Pyr'rhus. 

Quaes'ror. 

Qum-tiPi-us. 

Quin'tus. 

Quin'ti-us. 

Quiri'que-reme. 

Quir'i-nal. 

Qui-rPnus. 

Ram'nes. 

Ra-ven'na. 

Re-a'te. 

Re-glPlus (jiPj. 

Reg'u-lus. 

Re'mus. 

Rhae'ti-a 

Rhe'aSH'vi-a. 

Rhe'gi-um (je). 

Rhodes. 

Rho'-di-an. 

Ri-vi-e'ra (Re-ve-a'ra). 

Ro-ma'ni-a. 

Rom'u-lus. 

Roths'child (RosO. 

Ru'bi-con. 

Rus'.«i-an. 

Rus'ti-cus. 

Sa-bePli-an 

Sa'bine 

Sa-bPnus. 

Sa-gun'tum. 

SaPIust. 

Sal-lust/i-us. 

Sam'nites. 

Sam'ni-um. 

Sar-din'i-a. 

Sat/urn. 

Sat-ur-nPnus. 

Scsev'o-la (S evO 

Scip'i-o (SipO. 

Se-ja'nus. 

Se-leu'ci-das (s ; -). 

Se-lPnus. 

Sem-pi'6'ni-us. 

Sen'e-ca. 

Sen-tPnum. 

Sep-tim'i-us. 

Ser-to'ri-us. 

Ser'vile. 

Ser'vi-us. 

Se-ve'ius. 

Sex'ti-ae. 

Sex'ti-us. 

Sex'tus. 

Sib'yl. 

SPci-ly (Sis'). 

Si-ciPi-an (SIP). 

Si'don. 

SiPa-rus. 

Sil'vi-us Pro'cas. 

Si-roc'co. 

Sla vo'ni-an. 

Smyr'na. 

So'ci-i (she-). 



244 



Pronunciation, Etc. 



Soissons (Swa-song'). 


Tl'ber. 


Val-en-tin'i-an. 


So-phl'a. 


Ti'bur. 


Va-le'ri-us. 


Spar'ta. 


Ti-be'ri-us. 


Van'dal. 


Spar'ta-cus. 


Ti-bul'lus. 


Va'ri-an. 


Spo-le'ti-um. 


Ti-cl'nus (-siO. 


Va'rus. 


SpiVri-us. 


Ti-gra'nes. 


Var'ro. 


Stil'i-cho (-ko). 


Ti-gra-no-cer'ta. 


Vat/i-can. 


Su-e'vi. 


Ti'ti-es (Tish'yes). 


Ve'i-I (Ve'yi). 


Su-bur'ra. 


Ti'tus. 


Ven-e'ti-a. 


Sul'la. 


Tiv'o-li. 


Venice. 


Sul'mo. 


Tra'jan. 


Ver-ceKlse (selO. 


Sul-pi'ci-us. 


Tra-ja'nus. 


Ver-gil'i-us (jil). 


Su-per'bus. 


Trans-al-pl'na. 


Ve'rus. 


Su'sa. 


Trans-al'pine. 


Ves-pa'si-an. 


Sy-a'gri-us. 


Tran-syl'va-ni-a. 


Ves-pa-si-a'nus. 


Syb'a-ris. 


Tras-i-me'nus. 


Ves'ta. 


Syr'a-cuse. 


Tre'bi-a. 


Ve-su'vi-us. 


Syr'i-a. 


Tre-bo'ni-ns. 


Vl'a Sa'cra. 




Treves (Trav)- 


Vi-en'na. 


Tac'i-tus (TasO. 


Tri-na/cri-a. 


Vim'i-nal. 


Tam-ei-lane'. 


Tri -iim / vir. 


Vin'dex. 


Tan'a-quil. 


Tri-um'vi-rate. 


Vin-do-bo'na. 


Ta-ren'tine. 


Tifreme. 


Vip-sa/ni-us. 


Ta-ren'tum. 


Tul'li-a. 


Virgil (jil). 


Tar-pe'i-a. 


Tul-li-a'nura. 


Vir-gin'i-a (jin). 


Tar-pe'i-an. 


Tul'li-us. 


Vir-i-a'thus. 


Tar'quin. 


Tu-nis. 


Vis'i-e:oth. 


Tar-quin'i-i. 


Tu-ra'ni-an. 


Vi-tel'li-us. 


Tar-quin'i-us Pris'cus. 


Tus'can. 


Vol-a-ter'rae. 


Tel'a-mon. 


Tus'can y. 


VoKsci-an (shun) 


Teu'to-nes. 


Tyre. 


Vol'sci (si). 


Teu-ton'ic. 




Vul-tur'nus. 


Ter-en-til'i-us. 
Teu'to-buig-ei-. 


Ul'pi-us. 
Um'bri-a. 


Vul'tur. 


Thap'sus. 
Thebes. 
The-od'oric. 
The-o-do'si-us. 


Um'bro-SabgKli-an. 
U'ti-ca. 
U-ti-een'sis (-seV). 


Xan-thip r pus. 
Xerx'es. 


Thes'sa-ly. 




Za'ma. 


Thrace. 


Vad-i-mVni-an. 


Ze'la, 


Thra'ci-an. 


Va'lens. 


Ze-no'bi-a. 



INDEX. 



Actium, battle of, 175. 

iEdiles, plebeian, 67 ; patrician, 74 ; 
expenses of, 114. 

JSgusan Islands, battle of, 88. 

iEneas, 36. 

Aetius, 231. 

Agrarian Laws, 68. 

Agricola, 201. 

Agrippa, Marcus V., 168 ; adviser 
of Octavianus, 173. 

Agrippina, 191. 

Alaric, 228 ; takes Rome, 229. 

Alba Longa, 36; destroyed, 39; 
head of Latin League, 47. 

Alexander Severus, emperor, 220. 

Alexandrine War, 160. 

Allia, battle of, 72. 

Alps, 13. 

Ancus Martius, 40. 

Antiochus, the Great, 100; war 
with, 103. 

Antonius (Mark Antony), Caesar's 
lieutenant, 157; funeral ora- 
tion of, 167; usurps power, 
168 ; triumvir, 169 ; rules the 
East, 171 ; Cleopatra, 171 ; death 
of, 175. 

Antoninus Pius, emperor, 208. 

Apennines, 13. 

Apulia, 17. 

Aquae Sextiae, battle of, 127. 

Arcadius, emperor, 228. 

A rminius. (See Hermann.) 

Arsia, battle of, 45. 

Aryan, 21. 

Asculum, battle of, 81. 

Attila, 231. 

Augurs, 31. 

Augusta Livia, 184 ; empress-moth- 
er, 187. 

Augustus Caesar. (See Ccesar Oc- 
tavianus.) 

Aurelian, emperor, 221. 

Aventine, 26. 

Belisarius, 233. 
Beneventum, battle of, 81. 
Bribery, 115. 
Britannicus, 191. 



Britain, conquest of, 201 : aban- 
doned to barbarians, 228. 

Bruttium, 17. 

Brutus Decimus, conspirator, 165. 

Brutus, Lucius Junius, 44. 

Brutus, Marcus J., conspirator, 
165; dies, 171. 

Burrhus, 192. 

Caesar, Julius, priest, 135; with 
Catiline, 144 ; biography, 150 
triumvir, 152; wars in Gaul 
153 ; contest with Senate, 155 
crosses Rubicon, 156; consul 
158; defeats Pompey, 159 
"veni, vidi, viei" 160; con- 
quers Africa, 161 ; Spain, 163 
killed, 166. 

Caesar, Octavianus, adopted, 163 
praetor, 169 ; joins Second Tri- 
umvirate, 169; quarrels with 
Lepidus, 172; with Antony, 
174; conquers the East, 175; 
Augustus, and first Roman em- 
peror, 180 ; improvements, 182 ; 
wars, 183; death and deifica- 
tion, 185. 

Caelian, 26 

Calabria, 17. 

Calendar, reformed, 163. 

Caligula, emperor, 188 ; murdered, 
189 

Camillus, 72. 

Campania, 15. 

Campus Martius, 26. 

Cannae, battle of, 97. 

Canuleian Law, 70. 

Carrhae, battle of, 154. 

Carthage, treaty with, 77; de- 
stroyed, 105. 

Caracalla, emperor, 218. 

Capitoline, 26. 

Cassius, Caius, conspirator, 165 ; 
dies, 171. 

Catiline, conspiracy of, 143, 144. 

Cato, the Censor, 105; life and 
character, 110. 

Cato, the younger, 146, 152; dies, 
161. 



246 Outline History of Rome — Index, 



Caudine Forks, 78. 

Celts, 24. 

Censors, 71. 

Centuries, 42 ; Assembly of. (See 
Comitia Centuriata.) 

Cerealis, 197. 

Chaeronea, battle of, 133. 

Chalons, battle of, 231. 

Charlemagne, 237. 

Cicero, M. T., consul, 144 ; exiled, 
152; returns, 154; leader of 
Senate, 168 ; killed, 170. 

Cimbri and Teutones, invasion of, 
126. 

Cinna, L. C, 134. 

Cisalpine Gauls, enfranchised, 163. 

Citizenship extended, 219. 

Civilis, 197. 

Classes, 42. 

Claudius, emperor, 189 ; poisoned, 
191. 

Cleopatra, and Caesar, 160; and 
Antony, 171 ; and Octavianus, 
175. 

Clients, 50. 

Clodius, 152. 

Cloaca Maxima, 27, 41. 

Clovis, 233. 

Colonies, Roman, 79. 

Comitia Centuriata, 43 ; rise of, 63 ; 
change in, 115. 

Comitia Curiata, 52; decline of, 
63. 

Comitia Tributa, 64 ; rise of, 75. 

Commodus, emperor, 214, 

Constantine the Great, 223 ; founds 
Constantinople, 224. 

Constantinople, 224 ; its greatness, 
234; fall of the city, 237. 

Constantius, 222. 

Consuls, first appointed, 44; both 
patricians, 62. 

Corinth, destroyed, 106. 

Coriolanus, 67. 

Cornelia, 117. 

Crassus, Marcus, praetor, 140 ; con- 
sul, 141; character, 148; tri- 
umvir, 152 ; killed, 154. 

Curies, or Curice, 38; Assembly 
of. (See Comitia Curiata.) 

Curio, 155. 

Cynoscephalae, battle of, 101. 

Dacian Wars, 201, 203. 

Decebalus, 201, 203. 

Decemvirs, 69. 

Decius, emperor, 220. 

Delatnres, 187. 

Dictator, first appointed, 46, 62. 



Didius Julianus, 217. 
Diocletian, emperor, 222. 
Division of Empire, 228. 
Domitian, 197; emperor, 200. 
Drusus, Marcus Livius, 129. 
Drusus (Nero), 184 
Dyrrachium, battle of, 159. 

Egeria, 39. 

Elagabalus, emperor, 219. 

Empire, Holy Roman, 237. 

Equites, 117. 

Esquiline, 26. 

Etruria, 15 ; partially subdued, 77. 

Etruscans, 23 ; 41. 

Fabii destroyed, 68. 

Fabius, Maximifs, 94. 

Fetiales, 31. 

Fleet, first Roman, 86. 

Flaccus, Fulvius, 133. 

Flamens, 31. 

Forum, 27. 

Frankish kingdom of Clovis, 233. 

Gabinian law, 143. 

Galba, emperor, 194, 195. 

Galerius, 222. 

Gallic Wars, map, 153. 

Gaul, 14 ; plundered by barbarians, 

228. 
Gauls, 24 ; take Rome, 72. 
Gaul plundered by barbarians, 

228. 
Genseric, takes Rome, 230. 
Germanicus, 186, 187, 188. 
Goths, West, 227; found Spanish 

kingdom, 229. 
Goths, East, 233. 
Gracchus, Caius, 117 ; tribune, 121 ; 

death, 122. 
Gracchus, Tiberius, 117; tribune, 

118; murdered, 120. 
Greece, condition of, 99 ; declared 

independent, 102 ; subdued, 

106. 
Greeks, 24. 

Hadrian, emperor, 205 ; in Athens, 
206 ; war with the Jews, 207 ; 
his mausoleum, 208. 
Hamilcar, Barca, in Sicily, 88 ; in 

Spain, 89. 
Hannibal, 90 ; takes Saguntum, 91 ; 
plan of campaign, 92; invades 
Italy, 93; defeated at Zama, 
98 ; banished, 102 ; dies, 103. 
I Haruspices, 31. 
I Hellenes, 22. 



Outline History of Rome — Index. 247 



Heraclea, battle of, 81. 
Hermann (Anninius), 185; de- 
feated, 188. 
Honorius, emperor, 228. 
Horace, 183. 
Horatii, Curiatii, 39. 
Horatius Codes, 45. 
Hortensian Law, 75. 
Huns, 227 ; threaten Rome, 231. 

Iapygians, 21. 

Im%>erium, 54. 

Indo-European. (See Aryan,) 

Italica, 129. 

Italians, 22 ; admitted to citizen- 
ship, 130. 

Italy, map, 10; situation, 12; phys- 
ical features, 13 ; divisions, 14 ; 
climate, 18 ; population, 21. 

Janus, doors closed, 179. 
Jerusalem, destroyed, 197. 
Jesus, born, 186; crucified, 188. 
Jugurtha, 123 ; death, 125. 
Jugurthine War, 123. 
Julian emperors, 194. 
Julian law, 130. 
Julian the Apostate, 226. 
Jupiter, 26, 30. 
Justinian, 233. 

Kings, 53 ; expelled, 58. 
Knights, 43. 

Latins, 46. 

Latin War, 78. 

Latium, 15. 

Legends, doubted, 35; early Ro- 
man, 36. 

Legion, 38. 

Lepidus, joins Antony, 166; tri- 
umvir, 169; excluded, 173. 

Lepidus, Marcus, revolts, 139. 

Leucopetra, battle of, 106. 

Licinian Laws, 73. 

Livy, 183. 

Lombards, 234. 

Lucania, 17. 

Lucullus, Lucius, 142. 

Macedonia, 99. 

Macedonian War, first, 97 ; second, 

101 ; third, 104 ; fourth, 106. 
Maecenus, Cilnius, 173; patron of 

letters, 183. 
Manias, Spur i us, 73. 
Magna Grecia, 17. 
Manilian Law, 143. 
Manlius, 73. 



Marcus Aurelius, emperor, 209 ; his 
reforms, 211; his wars, 212; 
his book, 213. 

Marius, Caius, in Africa, 124 : de- 
feats Cimbri and Teutones, 
127; fails politically, 128; 
seventh consulship, 135. 

Martel, Charles, 237. 

Master of the Horse (Magteter 
Equitum), 62. 

Maximian, 222. 

Memmius, 123. 

Messalina, 190. 

Messana, 84. 

Metaurus. battle of, 97. 

Metellus, 124. 

Military Tribunes, 71 ; abolished, 
74. 

Mithridates, 131 ; massacre in Asia, 
132 ; dies, 143. 

Mithridatic Wars, first, 132: sec- 
ond, 141 ; third, 141. 

Misenum, treaty of, 173. 

Mohammed, 235. 

Munda, battle of, 163. 

Municipia, 81. 

F-lae, battle of, 86. 

Nero, emperor, 191; his cruelty, 
192 ; extravagance, 193 ; death, 
194. 

Nerva, emperor, 201. 

Nice, Council of, 223. 

Niebuhr, 35. 

Novus homo, 116. 

Numantine War, 107. 

Nuraa Pompilius, 39. 

Numidia under Jugurtha, 123. 

Odoacer, 232. 
Ogulnian law, 75. 
Optimates, 115. 
Orchomenus, battle of, 133. 
Otho, emperor, 195. 
Ottomans, 236. 
Ovid, 183. 

Palatine, 26; city of Romulus, 
37. 

Patricians, 38; origin and divis- 
ion, 50. 

Parthians, 154. 

Perusia taken, 172. 

Pertinax, emperor, 217. 

Persecution of Christians, 192, 222. 

Pharnaces, 160. 

Pharsalus, battle of, 159. 

Philip, emperor, 220. 

Philippi, battle of, 171. 



248 Outline History of Rome — Ixdex. 



Picenum, 16. 

Pirates, put down by Pompeius, 
243. 

Pistoria, battle of, 147. 

Plautia-Papirian law, 130. 

Plebeians, 38 ; origin and status, 
50; secessions of, 66, 70, 75; 
tribunes appointed, 66; ad- 
mitted to quaestorship, 71 ; ad- 
mitted to consulship and other 
offices, 74, 75. 

Pliny, the younger, 199 ; the nat- 
uralist, 199. 

Po, 13. 

Polycarp, martyr, 213. 

Pompeii destroyed, 199. 

Pompeius, Cneius, joins Sulla, 137 ; 
successes in Spain and Italy, 
140 ; consul, 141; exterminates 
pirates, 143 ; conquest of Asia, 
143 ; character, 149 ; triumvir, 
152; opposed to Caesar, 156; 
defeated and killed, 159. 

Pompeius, Sextus, 172, 173. 

Pontus, 132. 

Pontifex Maximus, 31. 

Poppsea Sabina, 193. 

Populares, 116. 

Populus, 50. 

Porsena, 45. 

Praetorian guard, 187. 

Praetorship, 74. 

Propertius, 183. 

Province, Sicily the first, 88 ; un- 
der empire, 181. 

Publicola, 46. 

Publilian law, 68, 74. 

Punic wars, map of, 85 ; first be- 
gins, 84; terms of peace, 88; 
second begins, 91; terms of 
peace, 98 ; third, 105. 

Pydna, battle of, 104. 

Pyrrhus, 80. 

Quaestorship, 62 ; opened to plebe- 
ians, 71. 
Quirinal, 26. 
Quirinus, 39. 

Radagaisus, 228. 

Ravenna, capital of West, 232. 

Regillus, battle of, 46. 

Regulus, 87. 

Religion, 30. 

Remus, 37. 

Republic, duration and division, 

60; established by patricians, 

62 ; constitution, 62. 
Roads, Roman, 79. 



Rome, site (map), 25; situation, 
26 ; " seven bills," 26 ; plan of 
city, 28; population, 29; the 
Romans, 30 ; founding of, 37 ; 
in Latin League, 47; consti- 
tution under the kings, 49; 
social condition, 50 ; improve- 
ments, 182 ; one-thousandth 
anniversary, 220; taken by 
West Goths, 229; taken by 
Vandals, 230. 

" Romanians," 204. 

Romulus Augustulus, last empe- 
ror, 232. 

Romulus, born, 37 ; founds Rome, 
37 ; deified, 39. 

Sabines, 38. 

Samnites, 16. 

Samnite wars, first, 77; second, 
78 ; third, 80. 

Samnium, 16. 

Saturninus, 128. 

Scaevola, Mucius, 45. 

Scipio Africanus, Major, in Spain, 
96 ; defeats Hannibal, 98 ; char- 
acter, 111. 

Scipio Africanus Minor (Mmtii- 
anus), 105; takes Numantia, 
107; life and character, 111; 
death, 120. 

Secession of Plebs, first, 66; sec- 
ond, 70; third, 75. 

Sejanus, 188. 

Seinpronian law, 118. 

Senate, 38; under kings, 53; in 
Republic, 63. 

Seneca, 192. 

Septimius Severus, 217. 

Sertorius, in Italy, 134; in Spain, 
148. 

Servile war, 140. 

Servius Tullius, 42; reforms of, 
42 ; constitution of, 55. 

Sicily, 18 : becomes a province, 88. 

Slaves, 52 ; increase of, 109. 

Social war, 129. 

Socii, 81. 

Spain occupied by barbarians, 228. 

Spartacus, 140. 

Spunus Cassius, 68. 

S. P. Q. R., 53. 

Stilicho, 228. 

Sulla, L. C, in Africa, 124, 125; in 
first Mithridatic war, 132; 
takes Rome, 137 ; reforms the 
constitution, 138. 

Sulpician reforms, 130. 

Syagrius, 233. 



H 404 85 



Outline History of Rome — Index. 249 



Tanaquil, 40. 
Tarentum, war with, 80. 
Tarpeia, 38. 
Tarquinius Priscus, 40. 
TarquiniusSuperbus, 43; expelled, 

45. 
Telamon, battle of, S9. 
Teutoburger Forest, battle of, 185. 
Teutones. (See Cimbri.) 
Thapsus, battle of, 161. 
Theodoric, 233. 
Theodosius, emperor, 228. 
"Thirty Tyrants," 221. 
Tiberius, 184; emperor, 186; at 

Capri, 188 ; death, 188. 
Tibullus, 183. 
Tieinus, battle of, 93. 
Tigranocerta, battle of, 142. 
Titus conquers the Jews, 197 ; em- 
peror, 198. 
Tours, battle of, 237. 
Trojan, emperor, 202: his wars, 

203, 204, 205. 
Trasimenus, battle of Lake, 94. 
Trebia, battle of, 93. 
Tribes, patrician, 38. 
Tribunes, 66; number increased, 

69; new position, 118. 
Triumvirate, first, 152 ; ended, 154 ; 

second, 169 ; Lepidus excluded, 

173. 
Tullia, 43. 
Tullus Hostilius, 39. 
Turks 235. 
Twelve Tables, Laws of, 69. 



Umbria, 15. 
Umbro Sabellian, 23. 



Vadimonian, Lake, battle of, 78. 

Valens, emperor, 228. 

Valerian, emperor, 220. 

Valerio-Horatian, 70. 

Vandals, 228 ; found African king- 
dom, 230; sack Rome, 230; 
State destroyed, 234. 

Varian law, 130. 

Varus, Quintilius, 185. 

Veii, wars with, 72. 

Venice founded, 231. 

"Veni, vidi, vici," 1 ' 160. 

Vercellae, battle of, 12T. 

Verdun, treaty of, 238. 

Verus, Lucius, reigns with Marcus 
Aurelius, 210. 

Vespasian, emperor, 197. 

Vestals, 31. 

Vesuvius, eruption of, 199. 

Via Sacra, 27. 

Viminal, 26. 

Vindex, 194. 

Virgil, 183. 

Virginia, 70. 

Viriathus, war with, 106. 

Visigoths. (See Goths, West.) 

Vitellius, emperor, 195 ; death, 196. 



Zeno, 232. 
Zenobia, 221. 



> M ' 








»°*A 



.*Sfi^. - a« /^M-. ^ « 







*°V 





%* *•>«• j, ^. "•' JF 

./ .*&■£ V/ .vaSfifc <^* * 




»* <ei 



V ..« 



^ °. IS V ■* 

o. *o . » * A 





' 6 








Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: DEC - £001 

« PreservationTechnologies 



• A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

v A 111 Thomson Parfc Drive 

A \* Cranberry Township, PA 1 6066 



(724)779-2111 



















-0* .•»••*. % 




r.« 9 ,0 







c o* .»•*:'.?♦. "*b. 



O « A * 










* .o r 




v» • • • » *o <-t. 




"^^ 







<* *<tv** 



"' 4* 




> % *0 » * * A 




4* / 




* 



••♦ "<s> 



<» *'..s* ,0 











V ... <* **"-•• 




HECKMAN 

BINDERY INC. 



8^ JUL 85 



N. MANCHESTER, 
INDIANA 46962 







4* »iL*» "^ 



r oV 






9* V 




• ^ 






